Category Archives: Stories

Don’t Forget…

Posted on December 18, 2011 by John Peltier| Leave a comment

Getting a pre-mission brief before flying a night mission.

Please take a moment from your shopping, your food, and your time with family & friends this Christmas season to think about those who are limited to other activities – like trying to save the lives of their wounded buddies, patrolling cold mountain roads littered with improvised explosive devices, and sleeping alone in hostile farm fields.

In 2007, I spent the week of Christmas enforcing a Temporary Flight Restriction over the President and his family. As important as this was, it was in all reality one of the most boring weeks of my life. But this was the way it was supposed to be; it meant that the First Family was safe with no intervention on my part. The following Christmas was a little different… Continue reading →

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Posted in Stories

Tagged aviation, military, personal

Following Canadian Refugees

Posted on July 4, 2010 by John Peltier| Leave a comment

This is the culmination of over ten years of research, for all ancestors of Capt. Antoine Paulint to see the places he had visited and influenced, and to learn more about the unique history of our Revolutionary ancestors. Coincidentally published on July 4 after putting it off for too long.

The Research

I think every child at one point or another has a school assignment to research their family tree. Talk about where their grandparents came from, if they had any relatives on the Mayflower, which ones served in the military, etc. I had to do this assignment at some point in junior high, and luckily had a family tree passed down through the generations. It started in the early 18th century and went through the end of the 19th century, which I thought was a good start for an assignment I had no other information for. There was one name on it that really intrigued me, Captain Antoine Paulint, b. 1737, d. 1813, Revolutionary War veteran. He was my 5th-great-grandfather and I wanted to know more. Unfortunately, it was at a time where I wasn’t old enough to drive a car and Google was still years away from its beginning as a research project.

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Posted in Stories

Tagged genealogy, military, new york, personal, revolutionary war, united states

Atlantis Fini Flight

Posted on May 21, 2010 by John Peltier| Leave a comment

UPDATE – 8 July 2011. NASA decided to give Atlantis one last go today on STS-135, making my photos NOT the last photos of Atlantis. Thanks for raining on my parade, NASA! I’m just glad they got one more launch in – Godspeed to the crew and the memory of the shuttle program.

Last Friday I had the honor of sending off the Atlantis on its final mission, while flying a patrol around Cape Canaveral. As a part of Operation Noble Eagle, we flew our F-15Es down from North Carolina to enforce the FAA’s Temporary Flight Restriction put in place before and during the launch. For a guy who grew up following all the shuttle missions as a kid and wanting to be an astronaut, this was a surreal experience. Good thing I like to take pictures. The sampling below represents a small number of the dozens of good pictures that came out.

After 31 flights and 115.8 million miles, Atlantis is going to wrap things up. I recently spent some time reading about the various things Atlantis participated in during its time serving NASA, and found some interesting facts.