An interesting story from the years at the U.S. Air Force Test Pilot School (USAFTPS) at Edwards Air Force Base.
Roaming in my patches box I found the name tag you can find above. There is a little interesting story behind this name tag and I thought of sharing it with you.
Here we go.
Col. Elton T. Pollock was the Commandant of the USAF Test Pilot School from 1989 to 1991. During that period I attended the USAFTPS with Class 90B.
So, why do I have his name tag?
The story goes, more or less, like this: one evening my classmates and I decided to go “roof stomping”: this is a peculiar, and well established, extra curriculum USAFTPS activity which calls for all the 25 members of class to climb on the roof of an house belonging to an IP or a faculty member and jump and stomp on it trying to make as much noise and fuss as possible.
That particular evening we thought that it would be a fantastic idea to “roof stomp” the USAFTPS Commandant home. And that we did.
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Now, Col. E. T. Pollock himself attended USAFTPS with Class 76B and we all guessed (rightly so) that he also did a little “roof stomping”, with this classmates. So we felt quite confident that our little disturbance would be accepted and condoned as part of the traditions of that great flying school that was the USAFTPS.
But, being pilots, and always liking to be on the safe side, we decided that would be also a good idea to present outselves to the next TPS social event in a sort of an anonymous way. You know, just in case the good colonel would try to identify some of the “roof stompers”.
So Class 90B presented itself at this social events, which was held, by the way, right at the good colonel house, with all its 25 class members wearing the same name tag. That’s right: E. T. POLLOCK.
