Pedro Chávez Columnist
Just a few blurbs about me. After all, if I am going to be writing opinion columns and other commentary on this site, you need to know who I am. Though I’m not the type that likes to toot one’s own horn, sometimes you gotta do it to prove a point. Maybe two. Which means I’ll do it.
If you must know, when I was young, long, long ago, we folks of Mexican background weren’t expected to achieve much. That was the thought of the land then. Ouch.
IMAGE: Me, Pedro Chávez, circa early 2010s. Watercolor done with the help of AI
The good thing? I expected a lot from me and never worried about what others believed that I could or could not do. And it was because of that personal mentality that I ended up proving some of those naïve folks wrong, more than once.
An indelible personal experience regarding that low expectations nonsense took place at Nav school, at Mather AFB and in Class 72-19. After going over the first quarterly check ride grades on a list that had just been posted on the classroom wall, two of my classmates pointed at me and said:
“You?”
I just smiled at them. I had already seen the list, which noted that I had gotten the highest check ride score in our flight. My score was 98.303 out of a hundred, to be exact. Someone else in a different flight had a higher score. At the end of Nav training, though, I ended up with the highest check ride score percentage in the entire class, which was divided into four flights. On graduation day, I was awarded the Husik Award for Flying Excellence.
“Yeah, me!”
Incidentally, I was the only person of color out of 67 students in that class.
Take that, all of you folks who are currently blaming DEI initiatives for the supposedly unearned success by those of us who don’t match the white look.
To tell you the truth, I had a big advantage over some of the other students in the class. That’s mainly why I won that award. Not because I tried very hard not to make mistakes while trying to come up with precise nav fixes or because I always checked every calculation twice. It had to do with being good with numbers; most of us Mexicans are. It’s in the blood. That was my big advantage. Just being facetious, just having fun.
Now back to my short bio. I have been involved in the Hispanic publishing industry since 1980, the year I founded a weekly bilingual newspaper titled Portavoz in Stockton, California. A copy of the Cinco de Mayo edition of that publication was selected as one of the items to be included in a 1980-time capsule, which is still buried under the San Joaquin County Annex Building in Stockton. I’m told that it’s going to be dug up in the year 2030.
I was born in Mexico, in Mexicali, a border city next to Calexico, California. I immigrated to the United States in 1962, at the age of sixteen. Three years later I joined the U.S. Air Force. It was either that, volunteer and join one of the branches of the military, or get drafted. Weird, I was just a permanent resident then, but I still had to register for the draft. I was working and going to college at the time, but opted for not getting a deferment.
The Air Force was good to me, in more ways than one, I must disclose. Though the pay wasn’t much at first, $76 a month before taxes, plus chow and a bunk in the barracks, joining it gave me the opportunity to continue my education. Just like some others did, I took advantage of the offer, which included partial tuition assistance, and went to school at night and on Saturdays. I must also add that the Air Force was so good to me that I decided to reenlist. Nah. Did it to finish school. Being facetious again.
After six years of enlisted service, I became an officer, once I obtained a college degree, got accepted to officer’s school (OTS), and successfully completed that training.
Again, I proved doubters wrong. Besides the previously mentioned success that I had at Nav school, I ended up getting the Distinguished Graduate honor at OTS. By the way, I was one of only two trainees with a Hispanic surname, out of 403 students in Class 72-01. Another ouch. Have a newspaper clipping to prove it. I also won the WSO Top Gun Award at George AFB, for nuclear bombing accuracy, while learning to perform flying duties in the back seat of the F-4, the Phantom II, a supersonic jet. Again, I was the only trainee of Hispanic heritage or a person of color in that training group, in Class 73DRG.
So, why do I keep bringing up the Mexican or Hispanic heritage as part of the conversation? Because it matters. And because times have changed for the better. I think.
After serving for twelve years, I left the Air Force with the rank of captain, in October of 1977. By then, I also had a master’s degree.
FYI: My BA is from Florida State University (1970) and the MBA from the University of Utah (1977).
BLACK & WHITE IMAGES: From long, long ago, when I was flying with the Air Force in the mid-1970s.