We were in our early 20's and single. Much of what we did was semi-insane the rest of it was completely insane. We flew too low and too fast. We drank too much too often and we chased women. We always blamed the proximity of the Marine base for our lack of success with the latter.

One of the great perks for pilots was getting to go on weekend cross-countries. Our government saw fit to give million dollar airplanes and fuel to young men and let us go wherever we wanted. Your tax dollars at work. It was on one of those trips that we flew into NAS at Dallas. I don't remember who picked us up. but we then went to Commerce. That is when I met you (Elaine) and your folks. As an aside, the slang name for a pilot who is not a very good aviator is "plumber." Jim introduced me to your father by saying, "You and Dad have a lot in common. He's a plumber too."

I remember one time Jim and I were sitting on the front porch drinking beer and being eaten alive by three pound North Carolina swamp mosquitoes. We had just finished being rejected by every girl we knew. It was hot and sticky, and we were broke and on our last beers with a whole weekend ahead of us. I turned to Jim and said,"At least I had no choice about ending up here. You could have staved in the Air Force and been living the good life." Jim looked at me and said, "What, and miss all this?"

When I think of Jim, and I do often, I remember the humor, the wild times and the certainty that I could always depend on him when it was important. I was always amused by his "aw shucks" demeanor that he used to hide his great intellect.

Unfortunately, my memories of Lt. Mills are only that he was real friendly and always seemed to be smiling Back then, the officers didn't commiserate with the enlisted guys so there wasn't much (if any) interaction between us. . . . Jim, on the other hand, always took the time to acknowledge everyone he came in contact with, regardless of rank. I always appreciated that and often thought that he'd be a great guy to know outside the military. Unfortunately, I never got to find out.

I really liked Jim, and, although we were in different squadrons at the Academy, I knew him well, and loved him.

Jim had the reputation of being an excellent pilot. As you know, your brother played golf at the Air Force Academy and continued later whenever he could. We all had nicknames and your brother was called either "Molino" from our Spanish class at the Academy for Mills or "Cool Breeze" because he had a very undemonstrative personality, but he did have a very cutting wit. It was my pleasure to know your brother and I was very sad to hear of his death in Vietnam in his aircraft.

On serving with the Navy as flight instructors at NAS Kingsville: I soon discovered that Jim was one of the few fully qualified instructors in VT-22, most of who were Marines, naturally. It became a source of pride to we Marines to be able to instruct throughout the flight syllabus, from A stage through L stage, and I quickly set out to match Jim's qualifications. During the course of my own qualifications, Jim and I flew many flights together as student and instructor since he was also Instructor Under Training (JUT) qualified and helped certify me for instructional duties. I found Jim to be an exceptionally good pilot who could not only fly the aircraft, but also he was adept at explaining the aerodynamics associated with whatever flight regime was the current topic of discussion along with the learning points we wanted to instill in the students.

We didn't earn much during those days and I remember Jim phoning my home one Friday evening and asking if my wife Ann and I would like to join several couples who were going to attend a high school football game that evening. To my embarrassment, I was dead broke at the time, and couldn't even scrape together the price of admission. Not being quick witted enough to provide a plausible excuse, I told Jim my problem saying we'd love to go, but we're broke. Not only did Jim offer to pay our way, he provided the money for a baby sitter to boot saying, "We've all been there, don't be embarrassed about it."

Jim would always seem to provide us with a laugh during our weekly AI/Instructors Meeting. Remember, the war was reaching its peak and the student throughput in VT -22 was tremendous. Consequently, we were working 6-7 days per week and 12-14 hours a day. It was grueling. Jim, always in good spirits, would find a way to kid with the Flight Surgeon about some obscure point of flight physiology that would crack us up or describe some erratic behavior of one of his students to provide a humorous learning point. I think it was Jim who invented the "Dumb Ass of the Week Award" to be awarded to the instructor who pulled the biggest boner during the week. Believe me, we had many to pick from each week considering the tempo of flight operations and some of the seagulls we were getting as instructors, at that time. To meet the demands of the war, the Navy really scraped the bottom of the barrel. As I said previously, at the height of the war, there were only 12 instructors out of 60 or 70 who were fully syllabus qualified. We were in an elite group.

I went to the Viet Nam memorial to say good bye to Jim when it first opened. I think of him often and feel the sadness of all of the life he was denied. But I usually end up smiling remembering the life he had.