Veteran of the Month: John Jewell

John Jewell spent his United States Air Force career viewing military planes from just about every angle. As an Air Force aircraft mechanic, and later a civilian quality assurance officer, Jewell has seen just about everything related to planes. However, his most memorable view came from a flight in a helicopter.

“The coolest thing I got to do was during an operation in Egypt,” Jewell recalled. “I was working with the Army there at a temporary command post and making sure they had all the stuff they need to maintain airplanes or their helicopters. At the end of the operation, they gave me a ride on an H-1 helicopter. The cool part about it was I got to fly over the Great Pyramids in that thing and took some pictures. That was probably the highlight of my whole career.”

Suffice it say it was view that not a lot of folks get to take in of one of history’s most treasured sites.

Growing up in Norman with his twin brother, Jerry, many of the views Jewell had came on the wrestling mat at Norman High School. Both brothers were standout wrestlers for the Tigers and after graduating in 1984, both headed for Tennessee to wrestle at the collegiate level. However, both decided to come home and wrestle at the University of Central Oklahoma. Deciding they weren’t “mature enough” for college, as Jewell put it, the brothers decided to join the Air Force in November 1985 and completed basic training together.

He listed locations on the West Coast as his preferred destination post-boot camp. He would instead land in a familiar spot.

“I didn’t know where I was going to get stationed, so I put down the places on the West Coast thinking I’d see some new areas,” Jewell explained. “But I got stationed right back here at Tinker (Air Force Base in Midwest City).”

Jewell spent a little over 12 years at Tinker working on the fleet of Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) planes that fly out of the base. As such, Jewell found himself away from home quite a bit with AWACS operations popular and the number of aircraft low.

“They were in high demand,” Jewell said. “They call it low density, high demand. I did a lot of time in the Middle East before Desert Storm and did some stuff in South America.”

Jewell would a get break, in a manner, from the time away from home when he was assigned to a base in England.

“I got to go to England and bring my family with me,” Jewell said. “We did four years over there, which was nice. I only went on a couple of short, temporary duty assignments. So, it really helped me gain back the stability for my family. We got to see a lot of castles and made great friends over there.”

After those four years, Jewell and family came back stateside for a stint at Offutt Air Force Base near Omaha, Nebraska to work on RC-135s, reconnaissance aircraft similar to the AWACS.

Jewell decided to retire from active duty in 2007 and move his family, including two sons, back to Oklahoma. He would earn his master’s degree from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University and now works on the civilian side of Tinker conducting quality assurance investigations on aircraft that are torn down and rebuilt at the base.

When’s he’s not on base working or spending time with his sons or wife, Erin, Jewell can be found on a bike riding trails around central Oklahoma. –19SM