Brushing Up

Fez, Morocco - photo by JoAnn Sturman

Scott Sturman
fliesinyoureyes.com

The lieutenant colonel’s thick, black hair was cut so short on the back and sides of the head that it resembled a five o’clock shadow, but he let the hair on the top grow to what seemed six inches long.  Rather than relax and lay flat, the follicles grew vertically skyward, and were then buttressed with hair gel and mowed parallel to the ground giving their bearer the ultimate flattop and the appearance of a Fuller Brush.  In the civilian world it was a look more apt to be found in a circus, but to his peers the style epitomized an officer destined for greatness.  One clever classmate coined the apropos moniker, “The Brush.”

“Mr. Sturman, drive yourself over here,” The Brush commanded in his staccato voice.

As was often the case, he had been hiding behind one of the stairwells of the dormitory, waiting to pounce on soon-to-graduate cadets, who might lose their military bearing.  The last few months The Brush was on a personal crusade to prevent me from falling into this trap, but by this point it was hopeless.  On this occasion I had decided not to march to the evening meal with my squadron but join my good friend Doug Goodman and the gaggle of intercollegiate athletes who were excused with these tiresome formalities.  It was a harmless gesture, but in The Brush’s eyes there was no such thing as a trivial disregard for regulations. 

“Yes, sir,” I grumbled, as I sauntered toward another reprimand.

“Mr. Sturman, I’m not sure there is room enough in my Air Force for you and me.  You’ve made some bad choices lately, and one of them is hanging around Mr. Goodman.  His hair is too long.  He has no military bearing and displays a horrible attitude.  Can you imagine the terrible impression, if a parent or VIP saw him strolling around the terrazzo?”

“He’s one of my best friends, and an intercollegiate athlete who happened to score 1600 on the SAT.  I could do worse for friends, sir.”

“Goodman and those friends of your’s in the 40th Squadron have ruined you.  They’re losers!  You’re as bad as the rest of those renegades.  Even your squadron patch, “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves,” designed by your classmate Borenstein is an embarrassment to the Academy.”

I had begun the semester as a Cadet Lt. Colonel and squadron commander of the 40th but fell afoul of The Brush and demoted to Cadet Warrant Officer and confined to the cadet area until graduation. The 40th were indeed renegades, the most unmilitary of the Academy’s forty squadrons.  Between a cheating scandal two years prior which decimated the pool of underclass talent and voluntary and involuntary resignations from my class, the squadron had been gutted of the manpower needed to compete against other squadrons in the Cadet Wing.  What remained was a hard core of closely knit cadets who would rather march tours and suffer confinement than comply with nonsensical rules.  We finished near the bottom of virtually every competitive category except marching to meals where we placed third.  What a joke!  Some of the guys had purposely marched out of step to torment Captain Dephwad, the unpopular Air Force office in charge of the squadron.  How could we score so high in something we didn’t care about?  Maybe some other squadrons had the same idea and were more out of step than we were.

The Brush went on to have an extraordinarily successful Air Force career, and from what I understand conducted himself in a totally different fashion than the picayune fanatic who terrorized cadets.  We met briefly six years later when I was being discharged from the service, and he was beginning to pin stars on his shoulders.  He recognized me sitting with a group of other captains in the Davis-Monthan Officers’ Club and approached our table. During our conversation, he was charming and affable, in short a perfect gentleman.  The general wished me good luck with my new career, and I am certain he meant it. 

Why the one persona for the Air Force and another at the Air Force Academy?  In my squadron alone four of my classmates either resigned or were dismissed prior to graduation, in large part because of officers who would rather haze than lead.  All the departed were the type one would want as a wingman.  Two became successful businessmen, another an attorney, and the last earned a PhD from Princeton University in nuclear physics.  There was plenty of room in The Brush’s Air Force for them; all they asked was to be treated like adults after completing Fourth Class Year.