Highest Duty

by Chesley B. Sullenberger

  Out there at the car, Lorrie and I looked at each other and I said what I was thinking: “We’re a real family now.”

  As we get deeper into our marriage, Lorrie and I have become big believers in the idea that we should focus on what we have rather than what we don’t have. We have weathered some serious storms in our relationship, but on a lot of fronts, we feel closer than ever now. And we really try to live in a way that allows for the word gratitude. In fact, Lorrie has since made a career as an outdoors fitness expert, helping other women stay in shape physically and emotionally. As part of her work, she teaches women about the power of accepting life as it presents itself, and enjoying that life.

  Lorrie and I have vowed to appreciate each other, appreciate our two daughters, appreciate every day. We don’t always maintain that positive attitude. We still have our arguments. But that’s our goal.

  And so, yes, I choked up seeing our two teenage daughters arm in arm, skipping down that street at Lake Tahoe. It reminded me of what I’ve missed, and that was hard for me. But it also reminded me of how lucky we all are to have one another, and why we have a duty to try to live happily together, from a place of gratitude.

  6. FAST, NEAT, AVERAGE

  WHEN PASSENGERS ARE awaiting takeoff on a commercial plane, I’m guessing that most of them don’t give a lot of thought to how the pilots in the cockpit got their jobs. Passengers seem most concerned about when they have to turn off their cell phones, or whether it’s still possible to use the restroom before the cabin door is closed. They wonder about making their connecting flights, or being stuck in the middle seat. They’re not thinking about the pilot’s training or experience. I understand that.

  Some passengers boarding Flight 1549 at LaGuardia said they had noticed my gray hair, which they equated with experience. But none of them asked about my résumé, my flight record, or my educational background. And why would they? As they should, they trusted that my airline, US Airways, had rigorously selected its pilots based on federally mandated criteria.

  And yet, every pilot has a very personal story of how he or she ended up in control of that type of aircraft and in that particular airline’s cockpit. We all had our own unique paths and career progressions, and then found our way to commercial aviation. We don’t often talk about all the steps we took, even among ourselves, but every time we pilot a flight, we are bringing with us all of the things we’ve learned over the thousands of hours and millions of miles we’ve flown.

  Until the mid-1990s, 80 percent of pilots working for major airlines were trained in the military, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. Now, just 40 percent of newly hired pilots get their training in the military. The rest come through civilian training programs, including some two hundred universities that offer aviation training. The World War II and Korean veterans—my mentors when I started—retired as commercial pilots more than two decades ago, after turning sixty years old, then the mandatory retirement age. There aren’t a great many Vietnam-era pilots left either, even though the retirement age was raised to sixty-five in 2007.

  As for myself, I am grateful that I came into aviation through the military. I appreciate the discipline taught to me during my days in the Air Force, and the many hours of intense training I received. In some civilian programs, pilots aren’t always taught with the same rigor.

  I was tested in so many significant ways during my time in the service that I sometimes look back and wonder: How did I make it through? How did I succeed when some didn’t? How was I able to complete every flight, landing my plane safely, when others I knew and respected didn’t make it safely to the runway and lost their lives? As I look back, I reflect on the intersections of preparation and circumstance, and that helps me understand.

  MY MILITARY career provided many of the important steps along the way. The initiation to my military life began in the spring of 1969, when I was a senior in high school and went to see my congressman, Ray Roberts, at his office in the ranching town of McKinney. Then fifty-six years old, he was a well-regarded Democratic leader in Texas, who six years earlier had been in President Kennedy’s motorcade in Dallas. He was four cars behind the presidential limousine when the shots were fired.

  I had come to Representative Roberts because in order to attend one of the service academies, I’d need a congressional appointment. In some congressional districts, patronage determined which young people got appointments at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland; the Air Force Academy near Colorado Springs, Colorado; the Military Academy at West Point, New York; the Merchant Marine Academy in Kings Point, New York; or the Coast Guard Academy in New London, Connecticut.

  But Representative Roberts believed his appointments should be merit-based. And so he had ambitious young men like me come to his office to be interviewed by a panel of retired generals and admirals who lived in his district.

  After we’d gone to the post office to take a civil service exam and scored well enough on it, we were brought before this ad hoc board of military heavyweights at the congressman’s office. The board he put together had two tasks. First, to determine whether an applicant had what it took to make it at a service academy. Second, to decide which academy an applicant was best suited for. Since my dad didn’t know anyone in high places, I was grateful to have a chance to land an appointment on merit. I had a shot.

  I was nervous going to my interview, uncomfortably dressed in my sport coat and tie, but I was excited, too. I’d devoured books about the military and about aviation since I learned how to read. I’d paid attention. So I was prepared when I finally sat down in front of that panel of four senior officers for their very formal twenty-minute proceeding.

  The retired Army general seemed to enjoy lobbing questions. “Mr. Sullenberger,” he said, “can you tell me which branch of the service has the most aircraft?”

  I assumed most applicants would give the obvious answer: the U.S. Air Force. But I knew this was a trick question. And I had done my homework. I’d studied the specifics of each branch of service and the aircraft they used. “Well, sir,” I said, “if you’re including helicopters in your count, the U.S. Army would have the most aircraft.”

  The retired general smiled. I was passing the audition. As we continued talking, he seemed eager to have me go to West Point. But I was pretty straightforward that day. I wanted to fly jets in the Navy or the Air Force, and I didn’t want to go to West Point.

  As things turned out, Representative Roberts offered the Air Force Academy appointment to another applicant. He gave me the Naval Academy appointment. Then, as fate would have it, the boy with the Air Force slot declined to take it. And so I moved up from the alternate spot.

  I was eighteen years old and bound for Colorado. I would be receiving the full ride of a first-class education. In return, I agreed to pay my country back by serving five years as an active-duty Air Force officer.

  I ARRIVED at the Air Force Academy on June 23, 1969, and as a kid from rural Texas, it was an eye-opening moment to meet the other cadets, who hailed from all over the country. Yes, a few of the 1,406 young men in my entering class were wealthy boys from elite families who got there through their fathers’ connections. More were sons of military officers, some from families with long military traditions. But once all of us had made our way through long lines to get our heads shaved, it felt as if those distinctions no longer mattered. It would be the same grueling road for all of us. Only 844 of the 1,406 who arrived that day would end up graduating.

  We were welcomed to the academy on a gorgeous Colorado morning when there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. From that day on, I was amazed by the West. You could see for a hundred miles in any direction, and the mountains were right there—a pretty stunning sight for a boy from the flatlands of North Texas.

  The academy grounds were architecturally dramatic, and at the time, the buildings were fairly new. The Air Force Academy had been completed just twelve years earlier; the first class graduated in 1959. If I made it t
hrough all four years, I’d be in the class of 1973, which would be just the fifteenth graduating class. The first female cadets wouldn’t arrive until 1976, three years after I left.

  I was pretty nervous that day. I didn’t know what to expect. Unlike some new cadets, I wasn’t aware of how intense the hazing was going to be. Once we had put away our street clothes and gotten into our drab, olive-green fatigue uniforms, the upperclassmen showed up and started yelling at us.

  “Stand up straight! Suck your gut in!”

  “Push your chest out! Get those shoulders back and down!”

  “Get those elbows in! Get your chin in, mister!”

  “Keep those eyeballs caged straight ahead!”

  Did it shake me up? Of course it did. At age eighteen, I lacked the life experiences to put it in perspective. I was a kid straight from my comfortable upbringing, and all of a sudden I was thrust into a situation where I didn’t know which way was up. It was disorienting.

  It is natural to question the utility of such theatrics. Do I think it was necessary? I’m still not sure. But now as an adult, I do understand some of the rationale for that first-year hazing. It was designed to tear us away from the easy, the comfortable, and the familiar. It was intended to refocus our perspective and reset our priorities. For all of us, it would no longer be about “me” but about “us.” That first year began to make real what, until then, had been theoretical constructs—like duty, honor, and “service before self.” These words could no longer be thought of as abstractions. Instead they now had real meaning in real life, as in “in-your-face” reality. It’s amazing how clearly and how quickly one learns about diligence, responsibility, and accountability when the only allowable, acceptable responses to any query by a superior are “Yes, sir,” “No, sir,” “No excuse, sir,” or “Sir, I do not know.”

  The rule was that the upperclassmen weren’t supposed to get physical with us. But there was some jostling along with the yelling and the intimidation.

  Those who argue in favor of hazing say that it builds a sense of loyalty among comrades, and there’s some truth to that. As that freshman year wore on, I felt very close to many of my fellow “doolies” (it’s a derivation of the Greek word doulos, which means “slave”). You have volunteered to fight for your country, and you feel that sense of patriotism. I have heard and read the experiences of those who saw combat, and they say when you get to the battlefield, you’re really fighting for your comrades, not some politician or political ideal. You’d rather die than let your comrades down.

  My doolie year left me bonded for life with some of my fellow freshmen. It was an intense experience; it wasn’t like just going off to college. We were being tested, abused, physically challenged. And we had to watch a number of those in our ranks fall away. Some wouldn’t make it through the mental and physical challenges of basic training. Some would fail academically, or feel too intimidated by the hazing. Others would transfer to regular universities after deciding, “This is not for me. I want a good education, but not at this cost.” Those of us who endured and remained became a brotherhood.

  That first summer we were sequestered at basic training, and it was the most grueling physical experience of my life. We’d have to go out on formation runs, our rifles held high above our heads, our boots slapping the ground at the same instant, and it was a real sign of weakness or failure to drop out of formation. The upperclassmen would yell: “Keep that rifle high! Don’t be a pussy. You’re letting your classmates down!”

  The guys who had the most trouble were those who couldn’t run well enough. They’d get used up and have to stop. And once a cadet dropped out of formation, the upperclassmen would circle him and yell at him. It was very intense. Some men would throw up from the exertion. On rare occasions, someone would cry. Some of my classmates had fathers who were military officers; they feared they’d be disowned if they had to drop out of the academy. I felt for them. I would later wonder where they would end up, at a civilian university perhaps—someplace where you could get a good education without going through all of this.

  I had grown up at sea level, and here we were, at an elevation of almost seven thousand feet. It was hard for all of us until we acclimated to the altitude. I was usually somewhere in the middle of the pack, but I held my own. I was determined to make it through the summer, and through the four years to follow.

  Though I was homesick and exhausted, I did enjoy some aspects of that summer. They would break us into teams and give us physical problem-solving tests to evaluate us. We were handed a bunch of ropes and boards and, as a team, had to come up with a way to get from one side of a large enclosed cubicle to the other without touching the ground or the water below, and in a limited amount of time. The upperclassmen and officers stood there with clipboards and stopwatches, observing who had the leadership skills to get his team safely across. When it was my turn to be the leader of this exercise, I did pretty well, and that gave me confidence.

  I know that summer of training helped me later. It made me realize that if I dug deep enough, I could find strength I didn’t know I had. If I hadn’t been forced to push myself that summer, I would never have known the full extent of what inner resources I had to draw upon. It wasn’t as if I was lazy as a boy. I wasn’t. But until that summer, I had never pushed myself to the limit. Those of us who made it through realized that we had achieved more than we thought we could.

  WHEN SUMMER was over, the physical demands let up, but the academic demands set in. It was an extensive and difficult core curriculum. No matter your major, you had to take a large number of courses in basic sciences—electrical engineering, thermodynamics, mechanical engineering, chemistry. We also took courses in philosophy, law, and English literature. In retrospect, I am grateful for the education, but at the time, the course load felt staggering.

  Luckily, for those of us who so badly wanted to fly, there were just enough perks to keep us motivated.

  My first ride in a military jet was during freshman year, in a Lockheed T-33, which dated back to the late 1940s. The plane had a bubble canopy and went about five hundred miles an hour. It was typical of jets from that era; the aerodynamic technology had outpaced the propulsion technology. It was well into the 1950s before jet engines were designed to produce enough thrust to fully take advantage of the strides in aerodynamics.

  So this old T-33 was underpowered. Still, it was an incredible thrill to be in it.

  Each new cadet was taken for a forty-five-minute ride, and the purpose was to give us an incentive to work hard so we wouldn’t drop out of the academy.

  This was the first time I’d ever worn a parachute, helmet, and oxygen mask, the first time I had ever been seated on an ejection seat. The officer piloting the plane did a roll, then headed ten miles west of Colorado Springs and flew over Pikes Peak upside down. My stomach was rock solid through all of it. I was so engaged in the moment. I was just eating it all up. I knew that, no matter what, this was what I wanted to do with my life.

  When the forty-five minutes were up, of course, it was back to reality. The hazing awaited us on the ground.

  We ate breakfast, lunch, and dinner in Mitchell Hall, sitting at rectangular tables of ten. Each table had a mix of freshmen, sophomores, juniors, and seniors. We freshmen had to sit rigidly at attention, our backs straight, our eyes only on our plates. We had to lift our forks to our mouths in a robotic fashion, and we were not allowed to look beyond the food in front of us. We weren’t allowed to talk to one another. Only when an upperclassman addressed us, asking us a question, could we speak. They would spend mealtime quizzing us, and we had to shout out our answers.

  We each had been given a book called Checkpoints, a pocketsize bound volume. We had to memorize all of this legendary lore, and especially the Code of Conduct. When upperclassmen asked us questions, there’d be hell to pay if we didn’t know the exact answers.

  The Code of Conduct, established by President Eisenhower in 1955, was considered vital because
during the Korean War, American POWs had been forced through torture to collaborate. The term in those days was that they’d been “brainwashed.” And so the military came up with specific rules of conduct, and we were expected to memorize them all. As future officers, for instance, we had to vow: “I will never surrender the members of my command while they still have means to resist.” We could surrender only in the face of “certain death.” We had to repeat key lines from the code: “If I am captured I will continue to resist by all means available. I will make every effort to escape and aid others to escape. I will accept neither parole nor special favors from the enemy.”

  Mealtime became increasingly stressful because the upperclassmen were relentless in their demands. We had to memorize the details about a great number of airplanes. We were expected to know foreign policy, American and world history, and sports scores from the day before. We had to be able to rattle off the full names of all the upperclassmen at the table, including their middle initials, and their hometowns. Now, forty years later, many of those names and middle initials remain seared into my head. I remember the hometowns, too.

  The degree of harassment awaiting you at mealtime depended on your daily table assignment. Walking into the dining hall, if you saw you were seated with a kindhearted senior, you were relieved. But if one of the seniors sitting at your table was a notorious hard-ass, your heart would sink. You knew dinner would be excruciating.

  In that case, you hoped for one of two things: Either another freshman cadet at your table would be so pathetically hopeless at memorization that the upperclassmen would focus on him, which meant they’d leave you alone and you could eat. Or else you hoped that one of your freshman tablemates was a genius or had a photographic memory—someone who got everything right. When upperclassmen came upon a know-it-all, they’d focus all their energies on stumping him, finding the one question he couldn’t answer, and then giving him hell for his wrong response. When that happened, the rest of us were ignored and got to eat.