SPARTANBURG, S.C. (WSPA) – Like many Vietnam-era vets, Ed White weighed his options and got ahead of receiving a draft notice.
“I went down and asked Air Force people to put me in there, and they said, ‘well, it’ll take a couple of weeks,”‘ White told 7NEWS. “And I said, you don’t understand…’ And I said,’ ‘I want to go tomorrow.”‘
And he did, but not in the way he imagined.
“It was a time when the Air Force had more people than they knew what to do with,” said White.
Which meant his duties varied.
One of his assignments was working for Lady Bird Johnson.
“We’d gotten duties in cutting grass and painting the grass green,” White explained. “And if nobody ever knew about Lady Bird Johnson, she did not like brown grass in the winter time and so her prerogative was to spray the grass green.”
Looking for a more challenging role, White deployed to Libya.
“Most of the time I worked the flight line at nighttime because we did the bombing runs,” White said. “That’s where they did the practice run and they’d drop live ammunition. Did runs with the Air Force and all the planes.”