By Jeff Mullin, Senior Writer
So what does a four-star general, one of only about a dozen in the Air Force, do upon returning to his boyhood home and a place he also earned his pilot’s wings?
He goes shopping, of course.
“I can’t find dog bones for my big dog in Germany, and probably couldn’t afford them if I could,” said Gen. Roger Brady, commander of U.S. Air Forces in Europe. “So I went to Atwoods for about a three-month supply.”
Brady, who lived in Enid as a child while his father, Ed, was football coach at Enid High School, and who went through pilot training at Vance Air Force Base as a young captain in the early 1970s, returned to Enid Monday to visit Vance and to speak to the Enid Air Force Association Chapter 214 Community Partners dinner.
The general spent part of his visit touring Enid, including the house in which his family lived when Ed Brady was leading EHS to a 20-11 record from 1948 to 1950.
“I took my wife and a couple folks who are with me on a nostalgia tour to see my house I lived in before,” he said. “We drove around the Square downtown. I have driven around small towns in parts of the U.S. recently. This one looks like it has handled the recession better than most.”
Brady graduated from Midwest City High School, where he met his future wife. Her father, Col. Randall Keator, was stationed at Tinker AFB at the time. Keator was a true war hero, having shot down the first Japanese aircraft over the Philippines at the start of World War II.
“He told me, ‘If you go into the Air Force and keep your nose clean, if you make major you can stay 20 years and make about $20,000 a year,’” Brady said. “Nobody in my family had ever made that kind of money. I wasn’t terribly ambitious, but that sounded like a good deal to me.”
Brady has gone way beyond major. His current command spans three continents, covers more than 20 million square miles, 92 countries and territories.
“It is a very busy command,” said Brady. “Our primary mission in Europe is to feed forces to Afghanistan and Iraq.”
When troops aren’t rotating in and out of Afghanistan and Iraq, they are helping defend our allies, Brady said.
“There are now 28 NATO allies and 22 Part-nership for Peace nations we help,” he said. “We are stretched to do that because we only have nine wings, and only about 175 fighter aircraft, about 200 total aircraft. That’s a fraction of what we had eight years ago when we had fewer allies.
“We go from a little place called Stavanger in Norway down to Aviano, Italy, in the south. We go from Lajes, in the Azores to Incirlik, Turkey. It’s a pretty far-flung area.”
Returning to Vance brought back memories, Brady said, even though the base has changed greatly since he was stationed there.
“Those were great times and, as I recall, pretty difficult times,” he said. “Vance has always been a very high-class base for us.”
Brady graduated from pilot training in October 1973, not long after the massive flood that inundated Enid that fall.
“We had a couple of guys in the class who didn’t come to graduation because they didn’t have any uniforms,” Brady said. “That was a lot of water in a short period of time for Oklahoma.”
When he was assigned to train at Vance, Brady said he and his fellow airmen were briefed on the close relationship between the base and city.
“You’d always get an in-brief about how to behave yourself when you got on base,” Brady said. “One of the things they always told us was how good the relationship was with Enid and not to do anything to mess that up.”
Brady said he has known many of Vance’s wing commanders, including the current 71st Flying Training Wing boss, Col. Chris Nowland, who worked for Brady at RAF Lakenheath, U.K.
“We have pictures of him if he gets out of hand,” Brady joked.
