Dave Calhoun ran away from home when he was 14.
It was a bad situation and Calhoun did what he had to do.
He ended up cutting wheat from Oklahoma to Canada.
He reconnected with his family when he was 17, in a phone call to his mother where she didn’t immediately recognize his voice.
Calhoun was preparing to join the Navy and needed his parents’ permission since he wasn’t quite 18 yet.
The permission came and Calhoun ended up serving on the aircraft carrier USS Forrestal.
An extremely advanced aircraft carrier when it was built in the 1950s, the ship was decommissioned in 1993 and eventually sold for scrap this decade.
Calhoun worked on the flight deck where he serviced A-4 Skyhooks, F-4 Phantoms, A-3 Skywarrior bombers and F-8 Crusaders.
Calhoun also said he worked to get certified in everything he could get his hands on.
“Even today I make sure all the cupboards are closed in my house,” Calhoun said, referring to a habit he developed by the need to make sure everything was properly secured while living at sea.
While Calhoun worked with a lot of aircraft, he’s spent much of his life with more land-based vehicles.
To read the full story, see the Wednesday, June 10, edition of The Camp Verde Journal.
