MEMORIES FROM THE AIR

{ Feature }

Memories from the air

From combat missions in Vietnam to the pentagon and beyond

Story by Dalondo Moultrie

Photos by Victoria Gaytan and courtesy Tome Walters

As a decorated airman and retired military leader who flew Air Force jets during the Vietnam War and later directed a defense agency at the Pentagon, Lt. Gen. Tome H. Walters Jr. said he and his fellow veterans are no better than any other American.

As a vet, however, he said he deeply respects and honors them, while some others are just as worthy of the same deep honor and respect.

“We ain’t nothing special,” Walters said. “I hold teachers and, after COVID, medical personnel in as high regard as I do my fellow veterans.”

Now a New Berlin resident on the ranch home he shares with his wife Claire, Tome spent more than 30 years in government service. He flew more than 3,500 hours for the United States Air Force, led men and women, and served the country’s Joint Chiefs.

But all of that came after his beginnings in Shreveport, Louisiana, where Tome was born and raised.

He joined his high school’s Army Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps, graduated and went to Louisiana Tech. There, ROTC leadership learned of his stint at JROTC and offered Tome one of 160 coveted spots in the Air Force Academy’s ROTC program. He took it.

Tome graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in international affairs in 1970 from the U.S. Air Force Academy. He counts three Rhodes Scholars among his 745 graduating classmates from a class of 1,035 cadets.

“Some in this area may know one famous classmate pretty well, Gregg Popovich,” Tome said.

After the academy, Tom thought he would try his hand at law school, but pilot training called his name and his path was set. Shortly after graduation, he married Claire Potter, a girl from his hometown who he met during a spring break trip to Louisiana State University where she was a co-ed. They’ve been married 52 years.

Shortly after graduating the academy, Tome became a pilot and flew in an air refueling squadron that provided in-flight fuel for fighter jets flying combat missions during the Vietnam War. Tome flew more than 100 air refueling support sorties in Southeast Asia during the conflict.

The next few years saw Tome serving as a flight evaluator and chief before becoming a tanker requirements project officer at the Directorate of Research, Development and Acquisition at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C in 1981. It was one of several stints he spent working at the Air Force headquarters.

“I spent a lot of years traveling the world,” Tome said. “I met with defense secretaries, presidents, prime ministers. … I visited 50 countries, many of them 10 or 11 times.”

Of his accomplishments, Tome said he is proud to have commanded three different squadrons of 14 planes and 17 crew members.

"The opportunity to command any pilot is as good as it gets,” he said.

Another of his prouder moments was working at the Pentagon on the modernization of KC135 tanker planes. He led the $16 billion project to put a new engine in the place responsible for helping to keep America’s jet fighter pilots aloft.

During his time of service, Tome was presented many awards and decorations, including the Distinguished Flying Cross, Vietnam Service Medal with bronze star, Defense Distinguished Service Medal, Distinguished Service Medal, Republic of Vietnam Gallantry Cross with Palm, Cross of Merit, Second Class (Republic of Estonia), Defense Superior Service Medal, Legion of Merit with oak leaf cluster, Meritorious Service Medal with two oak leaf clusters, Air Medal with two oak leaf clusters, and Air Force Commendation Medal with oak leaf cluster, according to the U.S. Air Force website.

After many years of moving around, he realized it all was becoming a bit much for his wife and two young children. Tome moved his family about eight times in the children’s 18 years with them.

So in finding a way to balance work and family life, he took an assignment at Randolph Air Force Base, allowing his daughter to spend three years and graduate from the schools here and form a semblance of a normal life, Tome said.

She went to Rice University, where she met her college sweetheart and eventually married. The couple decided to move after marriage.

Tome and his wife bought a tract of land on which their daughter and son-in-law built a home. Just a few years later, Tome began thinking about retiring and started building their own home on the same acreage, he said.

He retired from the Air Force in 2004. But he remains linked to the service and, more importantly, the veterans with whom he served all of those years.

“Folks who serve share a bond, they have something in common,” he said. “As I get older, I think more and more about veterans.”

On one day each November, he definitely is not alone. People across the nation celebrate Tome and his brethren every Nov. 11 on Veterans Day, deservedly so.