This one’s a little long, but it’s worth it!

Out of the clear blue the other day I heard from my friend and former Air Force colleague Tom Newman. Recognize anyone in this picture?

Bob Ewell (left) and Tom Newman at an International Officer School party, Maxwell Air Force Base, circa 1983. We were singing They’re Rioting in Africa, popularized by The Kingston Trio. When I saw the picture, I wrote back and said, “We were soldiers once…and young.”

Tom and I are about the same age, we both retired from the Air Force, and we’re both strong believers. But that’s where the similarity ends. Tom is a war hero, enlisting in the Air Force at age 18 and becoming a pararescue specialist (guys who jump out of airplanes or helicopters to rescue downed pilots in wartime).

Tom received the extraordinarily high honor, the Air Force Cross, for a daring rescue during the Vietnam war. The citation reads:

…for extraordinary heroism in military operations against an opposing armed force as an HH-3E Helicopter Pararescue Specialist in Southeast Asia, on 30 May 1968. On that date, Sergeant Newman voluntarily descended into a hostile jungle environment to rescue a downed Air Force pilot. With complete disregard for his own life, and hampered by darkness and concentrated automatic weapons fire, he requested the rescue helicopter above him to enter a nearby orbit, both for the safety of the crewmembers, and to prevent the hovering aircraft from establishing the survivor’s location for the unfriendly ground forces. When the rescue helicopter returned, he secured the injured airman to the forest penetrator and protected him with his own body as they ascended to the helicopter. Through his extraordinary heroism, superb airmanship, and aggressiveness, Sergeant Newman reflected the highest credit upon himself and the United States Air Force.

He later earned a college degree and re-entered the Air Force. I’m proud to have served with him on his first assignment as an officer. Even though we had a teaching job that required minimal physical activity, Tom kept up his fitness. His idea of a daily workout was to go out at noon and run 6 miles, the first at 8 minutes with each subsequent mile 30 seconds faster. Makes me tired to think about it!

Tom retired from the Air Force in 1994 and served in a variety of positions until 2006 when he found himself at Lackland Air Force Base serving as a pararescue and combat recovery officer indoctrination instructor. Here are some excerpts from a news article written in 2009. Tom was 62 years old in this picture!

A fit and trim man who looks ready for a return to active duty, Mr. Newman came back to Lackland three and a half years ago to instruct Airmen after serving in the private sector following his retirement from the Air Force. 

“It’s where my heart is,” he said about returning to pararescue, albeit as a government employee. “I say I’ve come full circle, my wife says I’m regressing.” 

About his Air Force Cross award, Tom said:

When you’re there every day, you show up for work and you’re ready to do whatever is necessary when called upon because you don’t know what you’re going to get called into…When you’re going after someone else whose life is in danger, whose life is at stake of possibly being captured and made a prisoner, the effort is worth it…You’re willing to take your chances to accomplish that…I was doing what I was trained to do, what I was supposed to do. It’s an honor, of course, and I feel honored.

About how he saw his job in 2009:

I’m a line instructor just like everyone else; I’m not in some little alcove…As long as I feel … I’m not slowing things down, that I still have something to bring to the table that’s valuable, I’ll still do it.

The article concludes:

That means future students can continue to draw knowledge from a man who, by his actions, has indeed exemplified the pararescue motto, “That others may live.” – Mike Joseph, May 29, 2009 (Mike’s article is worth the read in its entirety. You may have to go to Print Preview mode to read it.)

In 2016, Tom had a stroke. I was shocked, especially since he was the second of my friends to experience a stroke in 2016 and both were among the fittest people I know. When I asked Tom what caused it he replied:

And to what do I attribute it?  Life.  🙂  The reasoning I hear from many who know me runs pretty much along the same lines as your note.  There seems to be a presumption that because I do all those “right things”, this shouldn’t happen (to me).  But that isn’t how it works.  No one’s bulletproof, and no one gets out of the world alive.  The Lord gives and the Lord takes away.  Blessed be the name of the Lord! 

We just exchanged a few emails after he sent the picture, and he seems to be doing fine. When I told him about our son Mark’s stair racing accomplishments, Tom said:

I don’t compete anymore, but Heb 12.1 – 2 jumps to mind when I look for related Scriptures.

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.

I don’t think I’ll read that text again without thinking about my friend, former colleague, and war hero Tom Newman: a man of faith and discipline.