By Jack Limpert
While an editor in Washington, I attended three Gridiron dinners. What always seemed most memorable were the journalists in white-tie, looking like extras in a movie about the Gilded Age, and the Marine Corps Band playing the anthems of the four service branches. When the anthem of each service was played, those who had served in that branch of the military stood at attention.
Most of those standing for the anthems were over 60. For all the talk of what journalism needs, you rarely hear much about drawing more military veterans into journalism.
I went in the Air Force in the 1950s and for me it was more of an education than four years of college and a year of law school. When I arrived at Lackland AFB in Texas, I was surprised that none of the guys I lived and marched with were at all like those in Wisconsin I’d grown up with. Basic training was tough, a shock to the system, and we learned to accept our differences and get along.
As you move on from basic, you’re smart to keep your mouth shut until it’s the right time to talk and you have something to say. If you pay attention, you figure out how things are done and maybe do well. Looking back, I think having to deal with all kinds of people in pressure situations helps you develop a bullshit detector. You figure out who’s mostly talk.
One of the most successful Washington businessmen I’ve known never went to college and he credited his three years in the Air Force with giving him the confidence and savvy to deal with and understand all kinds of people. He figured basic training and his two years overseas were the equivalent of a master’s degree in what people—including those who voted for Donald Trump—are really like.
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