December 6, 2024
This talk was initially developed in response to a request from the Air Force Reserve for senior officers with deployed leadership experience to speak at professional development seminars. It has since evolved, however, to reflect the successes and failures of a thirty-year active and reserve Air Force career. From the cockpit of a C-130 landing on a blacked-out runway in Iraq to counseling a sobbing sixty-year-old master sergeant pleading not to be sent home from his last deployment, Ten Things relates the lessons learned – lessons just as applicable outside the military – by a citizen-soldier pilot leading his flying squadron in peace and war.
Walter Gordon worked as an engineer in Western New York from 1979 to 2020 at four different aerospace firms, lastly as a business development manager in the Moog Space and Defense Group. He also retired as a colonel from a parallel 30-year career in the Air Force Reserve, serving as commander of the 328th Airlift Squadron and then 914th Airlift Wing in Niagara Falls, New York. He is a veteran of Operations Desert Storm and Iraqi Freedom and has over 2,000 hours flying time in the C‑130.
Mr. Gordon has a long-time interest in aerospace and aerospace history, joining AIAA at age 17 and currently serving as chairman of the Niagara Frontier Section and on the History Committee. He is also the chairman of the Niagara Frontier Aviation and Space Hall of Fame nominating committee and a past president of the Niagara Aerospace Museum and Aero Club of Buffalo. He has B.S. and M.S. degrees in Aerospace Engineering from the University at Buffalo and an M.S. in Strategic Studies from the U.S. Air Force Air War College.