As a child in Victoria in the ’80s, Jason Blevins watched the evening news with his family and saw Dr. Red Duke, the folksy, mustachioed trauma surgeon, deliver his health segment. Dr. Duke would handle a jackhammer to make a point about kidney stones or saddle up a horse before turning the conversation to skin cancer. After Blevins left home to study at Texas A&M University, he faced a decision: go the route of Dr. Duke and become a doctor, or follow in his father’s footsteps as an Army pilot — Blevins was both a pre-med student and in ROTC.
He became the second Army pilot in the family, but was also studying for the MCAT when, on Sept. 11, 2001, he learned of the attacks on the Twin Towers. “At that point, all my MCAT books went in the trash,” he said, “and I knew I was going to be an Army aviator for a full career.” He flew Black Hawk helicopters and, at one point, served as an operations officer coordinating a 1,200-person, 72-helicopter task force in Afghanistan. The task force operated around the clock, scheduling flights to meet the needs of the moment, whether it involved moving a general around the battlefield, mounting a large-scale air assault or evacuating a wounded soldier.
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After a 25-year career, he retired as colonel and traded the cockpit for a remote C-suite job with a defense contractor. Sitting alone in his Houston home office, pressing keys on a laptop, was a stark contrast to the camaraderie he had come to cherish in the military…