 The Power of Imagination, this is season one episode two, he says, grandiosely. The whole idea of the show is to inspire you and entertain you, and I think we're really going to do that today. First, I'll talk about a figment of my own. Every golfer, I think, has a figment when they walk up to the tea on a par three of, well, either a dream, making a whole one, or a nightmare, putting it in the water, the sand, whatever the hazard is. So, bring up my picture from Saturday. My dream came true. Number two at Amalabay, 179 yards, and it was a figment. Then it became real, and it makes up for every bad shot I've made, and there are millions of them. So, enough about that figment. We've got a great show today, a great guest, an old friend, and somebody you'll really enjoy getting to know. The intro is simple. It's General Dave Goldfein, retired U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff, and he's going to talk about a figment consistent with our theme here, where we take something that resided in the imagination and make it real. And he did that. And reminder, here's the definition of a figment, and actually here's Dave Goldfein, fingers. My good friend, the retired 21st Chief of Staff, the Air Force, he served for 37 years and was a fighter squadron commander, group commander, twice-wing commander, combat in Desert Storm and Operation Allied Force. Now he's in San Antonio, Texas, and he says he's liking retirement a lot. Aloha, General Goldfein. Aloha, pig. Thanks for having me. I'm a pleasure, pleasure. And we have a lot of connective tissue. We could take an hour just discussing our connective tissue. Amen. And it kind of starts with a squadron of some repute, the world-famous, highly-respected, triple nickel that we both got to command, right? Yep. Amen. Yep. No squadron like it. And that was long before you stood up and testified or sat down and testified to get confirmed as a 21st Chief of Staff. And a lot more fun, can I just say? Oh, yeah. Nothing like it. And as I thought about that, to me, Dave, fingers, you are every man's fighter pilot, every woman's colleague, co-worker, fighter pilot. There's a humble, common person to you that we all admire. And I have to ask you, when you first sat in the office of the Chief of Staff, the Air Force, in charge of the whole barren thing, and sat behind the desk, did you ever have a fleeting figment that maybe somebody would catch you and ask you what the heck you were doing in there? I actually lived in constant fear, especially my confirmation hearing that Chairman McCain would raise a piece of paper, you know, lean forward in the microphone and say, hey, General Goldfein, I happen to be holding the transcript from your Air Force Academy days. Are you kidding me? You were Class of 83 at the beginning? Actually, I joke. I was the Class of 81, 82, and 83. I was the John Belushi of the Air Force Academy. And that's what I wanted to allude to was the 81, 82, 83. But you were the top graduate in philosophy, as I recall. And I only know this because you told me. Number one of one. One of one. And I think you also told me you were marching towards a form of punishment that we didn't have at the University of Wisconsin right up to graduation. As a matter of fact, I had to call my physics instructor to ask whether he would share with me whether I was going to pass and graduate, because I was planning on getting married the next day. And I asked him, I said, Hey, sir, if you don't mind just telling me right now if I flunked, and I'm not going to graduate, I can save my family a lot of money, a lot of hassle. And he said, Well, he goes, I got good news and bad news or a cadet golfing. He said, good news. He goes, you're going to graduate. You passed. You can get married. He said, the bad news is you will never return to the academy as a physics instructor. Well, you weren't planning to do that anyway. Right. No, because you come from a distinguished family of fighter pilots. Dad was an icon of the fighter community. He served in Vietnam in the world famous by the respective triple nickel. And as I recall, when you pinned on Colonel, there was, was there over 100 years of commission service in the room from the Goldfields. Sure was. Yeah. Older brother, Steve, who retired as, you know, two star general acting director of the joint staff at the time. And my younger brother, Mike, who retired active duties Lieutenant Colonel and went on to be a reserve F 16 instructor for many years. And now next generation is there with my daughter serving as an intelligence officer and my nephew is a pilot training right now in at Shepherd. And my other nephew is a squadron commander flying Eagles. Cool. Finally, a fighter pilot. Yeah, that's right. My background was mostly an F 15. So a little bit of rivalry there. And our connection started before we knew it started because we were at Luke Air Force Base at the same time, doing different things. Yes, I was requalifying in the F 15 and you were in your initial F 16 training. And do you remember the conversation we had in the triple nickel bar at Aviano in December of 1998? Boy, do I ever. Yeah, when this one guy, this guy lost his brakes in an F 15 and was coming right at me. Yeah. So the way I remember you said he was coming right at you or no, you said, you said, were you there at Luke when that happened? And of course, I said, was I there why that was me? And I had lost all brakes and steering and it should have been killed. And you are the only one who saw it for 10 years. I didn't know how I survived. And then you enlighten me. And that's another 15, 20, 30 minute sort story best told with cold beverages. So we'll leave it there. And then we linked up again at Aviano Air Base in Italy, where you commanded the world famous highly respected triple nickel and had the joy of having a boss, me as a one star wing commander who had commanded the same squadron and took special interest in your work. That had to be fun. Oh, yeah. That was a blast. And I'm sure we'll get to it all. We'll share with the listeners the great fig leaf quote after welcoming back from Serbia. Yeah, we'll probably get to that. And you were we had great leaders there. Yes, really, Jeff Eberhardt, Dave Nichols, all the guys who came into squadron. And it was a time I would suspect that many of you this today won't be aware or won't recall what a big effort Operation Allied Force was. Because it was kind of in the background news. There were no ground troops. It was right about the time of the tragic Columbine shootings. It took up a lot of the media bandwidth. And so it didn't make a lot of news, but it was important. And we I'll speak for you and me and the folks who served with us because this this is what I've heard. We felt like we're doing something right and important and trying to stop ethnic cleansing. Yeah. And, you know, it was so unique to because, you know, you and I had discussed the fact that, you know, fighting from home where our families lived was not in the brochure. And so we had to work our way through that. And and our spouses today, you know, that went through that with us. Their their war stories are as good as anything we have to tell. It was a lot harder, I think, on them than on us, because we were doing something we believed in. And, you know, if you're trained to be a warrior for all of your life, you don't, you don't want war. But if it's there, you want to be in the game. Yes, it becomes reality. You want to be involved in it. And we were in a unique way in a war that where the principal application military power was from the air. And I think I've picked words that won't irritate our army guys too much, our army friends too much. But it was a truth. Now, that was not your first combat experience, right? Right. Now, I, you know, my career was, I was quite lucky, actually, because like you say, you know, you never wish for war. But if there's one to be waged, you want to be part of it, because it's what you're trained to do. And you want to do it with your values intact. And there's nothing better than leading a squadron into combat. And so I had the privilege of flying on the wing of an incredible warrior in Desert Storm. Again, I think we both know Billy Deal. And, you know, Billy's, I remember my first time going into combat. And it's like every, you know, every aviator who's ever gone in for that first time, you know, it's the average everybody's prayer, right? Don't let me, don't let me screw this up. My buddy's down, right? And you always sort of wonder, man, am I trained? Am I ready? And I'll never forget that first, you know, trip across the line into Iraq and Desert Storm. And our, our lead, Billy Deal, and I was his deputy mission commander, he's calling out threats like it's a walk in the park. Of course, he's a Vietnam vet, mid killer. Rest of us are green. And he says, hey, there's AAA, you know, right two o'clock, which is anti-aircraft artillery. And we look down and we're looking at it. He says, okay, there's some, and he calls it out like there's SA-2, surf stair missiles left 10 o'clock. And we're watching these telephone poles come up at the formation. And then I hear a splash, MiG-29 and one of the Eagle guys, of course, you know, shot down a MiG-29 in front of the package. And I remember that moment in my cockpit, because I realized that what I was experiencing was not new. I hadn't experienced almost everything I was seeing, hearing, feeling in red flag at Nellis Air Force. Big training exercise for our non-air force viewers. So what I described very often using that experience as chief, I said, you know, at the end of the day, that's one of our moral obligations as leaders is to produce confidence under fire. We got to produce that same moment that Captain Dave Golfin felt because I had been trained well for what I was then asked to do. That's what we owe it to our young folks going forward. And so I became a huge believer in training hard, bleeding in training so you don't bleed in combat. And that's as real as it gets. But you still can't totally dismiss the fear of screwing up, the fear of not being able to pass the test. And I didn't have that moment until I was one start Aviano. And on my first real combat sortie, I'd flown some pseudo counters, not real demanding missions over Iraq during no fly zone enforcement, but I was scared to death. And I was terrified that I wouldn't be able to do what I preached for at that point 25 years. Once you get through that, then all of that training, all that realistic training and the fine examples of guys like Billy Deal and all the other heroes we got to learn under comes through. But at first part, I was sweating it. So you were flying over Iraq and with your last name being Golfin, how did you feel about the potential maybe being shot down and maybe captured in an environment that might not be so friendly? So, you know, this is, it's fun to think back now on, you know, how you how you approach things as a captain, right? And so, you know, I was pretty confident that with the name like Golfin, there would be no POW exchange or old Golfin, right? So if I got hit, you know, that was it. So I was either going to, I was either going to walk out on my own, or I was not going to make it out. So I got creative, like young captains do. And I decided that it would be far better odds for me if I replace my parachute lowering device, which is what you normally have in the back, you know, under your parachute, because there weren't that many trees in Iraq. So I replaced it with a complete head-to-toe Arab outfit, right? With everything but from flip flops to Gutra, everything. And I talked the ID card folks into making me an ID card for combat. And I flew with my childhood and college musical hero, his name. So I actually flew combat as Harry Chapin, the entire time. And luckily, I never had to use the card. And we'll get back to that. And we're going to have to get to that soon. Some folks tuning in may have thought we're going to talk about the event in May of 1999 where you were shot down. And we've got a picture of some relics there. That's the tail of the squadron flagship in the canopy from your airplane when you were shot down and thankfully rescued. The worst phone call I ever got was, of course, we lost an airplane. I was the wing commander. It was about one in the morning while it was war. And we'd already lost an F117. But when they told me it was you because of our friendship and because of your role as the squadron commander and with all the respect they did. But the next picture goes to the story you talked about. There's you after return with me and Jeff Eberhardt. I have one of the great combat leaders. Everyone can do a whole show on him too. But next to it is a picture you gave to me and I didn't zoom in on it too much. But fingers when you got back to Aviano, I did put my arm around your shoulder and say, you know, I never got shot down when I was a triple nickel commander. Of course, I was a triple nickel commander in peacetime in Arizona. But you know, I still never got shot down as the nickel commander. But all of these vignettes and figments aren't what I want to talk to you about because there's one story that I only know part of that is really extraordinary. So there's a picture of you on a bicycle with a lot of hair. Yeah, and getting back to that door. Yeah, I can't look at that too long. But the story I want to get to is I understand that you actually got time off from the Air Force Academy during your course of instruction to take a break and hit the road. Yeah, so it was, let's just say it was a sort of a mutual decision by the academy leadership and me that I was struggling academically. I was doing terribly in the military side of the house. But at least athletically, I was slow. So we we made a mutual decision that I probably on my current path was not going to graduate and really need to go get my act together. So I actually quit the academy. Now, what they did, there were there were 10 of us who they called us in and said, we're going to try something new for U10. This is just where, you know, luck timing plays. They said, for U10, we think there's potential here. So if we're going to keep you a slot for you, if you want to come back in a year. And on, I think it was March 28 or something like that, they said, you have to call back and tell us yes or no. Are you coming back? So my, you know, I had mentioned that my one of my passions growing up as a kid was music. And I'd learned to play the guitar, you know, listening to Harry Chapin, James Taylor, John Denver, Bob Dylan. And these guys were all my heroes. And Harry Chapin was especially my hero because I didn't know until I got to the academy that he went to the Air Force Academy, class of 1965. And he only lasted through basic training. And then I went off to Cornell, didn't do well at Cornell and ended up driving a taxi in one of his famous songs. Yeah. And if I could interrupt just for our viewers who aren't our age, we've got a short clip of his iconic song, Cats in the Cradle. And we'll just remind people, and this will be stuck in their heads for the rest of the day. And so that's stuck in everybody's head, but that's the guy you wanted to link up with, I guess. Yeah. And so I ended up getting through an academic advisor, a connection to a connection, I ended up actually getting a job as a roadie for in Harry's band. And so I jumped on a 10 speed bicycle, that one in the picture, and left it, left everything I owned, which was, you know, fit into a backpack, essentially, with my girlfriend at the time who lived in San Antonio, Don, and started peddling to the, to New England to join up with Harry's band. And that was, I was actually three quarters of the way there when he had his tragic car accident and we lost him. And so I found myself, you know, traveling around the country on this bicycle. I ended up, I ended up traveling for upwards of a year. And funny thing happened, you know, people took me in as I was traveling, found a dog along the way that traveled with me, rode on the bike. And I stayed in more people's homes. And I came to the conclusion that this country is worth defending. And those people that took me in, you know, they, what we stand for as a nation, they were the, they were the heart of America, you know, the back row. So on March 28, I called back to the academy and said, if you got a slot, I'll come back and went back and finished up. And they, they still are the heart of America. And I know there's a lot of pessimism and it's been a tough year. Every year is a tough year in its own way. The thing in me would say suck it up, people. It's never easy, but people do make it tolerable. And you know, I had an opposite and similar experience when I rode my Harley around the four corners of the United States to see the country that I defended. And it was the people and they're wonderful. And they're wonderful regardless of any category you'd like to put them in. So, you know, it's important that we remember that. So you never met Harry Chapin, you still flew with his name on your shoulder. And I understood as I connected with you to talk about doing figments, the power of imagination and get a plug in there. It turned out you had just had a zoom call with his family. You know, I had, I had a, they just had a documentary on him that I happened to, somebody pushed to me and I got a chance to watch it. And his brother Tom and his son Jason were the architects of this documentary. And we lost Harry 40 years ago. So this guy still has this incredibly outsized impact on his passions, which were world hunger and poverty. And so I thought it would be important for the Chapin family to hear a story of how their brother, father inspired this knucklehead cadet who grew up to be chief of staff of the Air Force. And as I told them, I said, you know, your brother, you know, Harry, I've flown a lot of combat and a lot of deployment gone, sent me off to war four times. And I said, I, you know, I never went alone. I always had Harry with me. You know, he was either in my head or in my headset and made a big difference. And I think in your heart too, fingers, and I didn't know much of it, the rest of his story till we connected. And I found out you talked to the family. I encourage all of our viewers, or both of our viewers, depending on how many we have today, to go to the Wikipedia page because he was an incredible philanthropist, not just a musician and really remarkable. And the way this man was, this man whom you never met, is a lot of the way you are. And I don't know if that's karma, serendipity. This is what his epitaph is on his tombstone from one of his songs written in 1975. And so that's the inspiration for me. You know, if you try to make a difference, improve what your life can be, you amazed what you can do and amazed how much it can change the world. And I know that you've done that with your life. And I'm honored to know you and call you a friend. So... Oh, we're same back at you. And I think the viewers should know that when it comes to combat leadership, it doesn't get better than fig leaf. And when I want to be, have a chance to lead my own wings, you know, I used to carry around this bracelet that says WWFD. That's all it said on it. And I would just look at it every once in a while and I said, what would fig do? Really? Well, that's touching. We had a great team. It was an incredible time. It always is. And it was the easiest job I ever had because of people like you and because of the cause. So I know you're going to do a lot for the world in your new life. I hope you'll enjoy it. I hope you get out to white. That is today's view back there. And we got about 28 more stories to share in detail, maybe, with the audience in seasons nine through 12 of pigments, the power of imagination. There's another plug for you. And fingers, I hope you'll tune in to some of the things we've got coming up. So you can see we're going to have some two survivors talk about recovery, of keeping the dream of recovery alive. And we've got a diplomat who will talk about dreaming of peace and dealing with North Korea. And then Susan Helms, who I'm sure you know is one of the most brilliant, wonderful people, what a great astronaut, and then good friends of mine who took figments to screen in Hollywood. So somewhere after that, we'll get you back on or maybe we'll just get you and Don and I and we can do our three part. This is the real story of your shoot down and rescue. Yeah, great. Yeah. So we're about out of time for you. We've got a little more time for the show. Is there anything you'd like to close with one more story about your life where you took something to reality that you didn't expect? Because I know you got a million of them. Well, I would just say that, you know, of all the blessings of being chief of staff at the Air Force, the greatest blessing for me is I got to do it with my best friend. And my high school sweetheart for 37 years and 22 moves and four wars she sent. She was by my side, still there. And so this has been a team effort. And we're just so honored to have had a chance to really to serve and to serve in leaders. Well, Don is awesome. If you bring back the picture of the burnt tail and canopy of the S 16. And I'll tell my favorite done story, you know, this one already, we were standing on the ramp at Aviano, you've been rescued in a very hot, opposed rescue with the helicopter shot up and some beautifully brave, a pair of rescue protecting you from that. That's a whole nother story. And now you're going to be brought back to your wife and kids arms and back to us. And I always say I throw this in their two fingers, you got off that mc 130 they're playing that brought you back after you're picked up by helicopter, like you were getting off a cruise ship. And I don't know why that's the image that stuck, but it was there was a nonchalance of, Okay, I've been shot down and rescued. And Don was next to me and she looked up to me. And that's one of the things I like most about on is very few people look up to me physically. And she did. And she said, Sir, what are they going to do with the airplane? Because the squadron flagship you dejected from in Atlanta, in Serbia. And I said, What do you mean? So are they going to leave it there? They're not are they? They're going to buy it? Are they going to go get it? Her husband's been shot down and rescued. But she's so committed that she wants to make sure the squadron flagship survives. And as I got ready to do this, I put some notices on Facebook. This talks to what you were saying about the strange nature of fighting from home. Do you remember what you told war dog Henderson after you were shot down, rescued and ready to go home? Now. So apparently, you were telling him because he was sharing your squadron building with his F 15 squadron, right? Right at Aviano. And you told him kind of the summary tale of the missile and the ejection and the escape and the pickup. And when you finished it, and now I'm going to go home and do what every fighter pilot does after they've been shot down. And war dog said, What's that? He's you fingers said, I'm going to go more my lawn. Yeah. And that's you. And every man we believe in and a great exemplar for us. A great friend for me. And hopefully an inspiration for everybody who's watching Aloha fingers. God bless you. You too, Vic. Thanks. Thanks for watching, folks. Be sure you click like and do all that other stuff that gets us street cred on YouTube and be a meal. Aloha.