An Air Force Pilot's Post-Retirement Career Dilemma: A Job at a Big Bank or the Pilot of Air Force 2

On this episode of Our American Stories, on the morning of September 11, 2001, Peter Braxton was the first military pilot in the air over the burning Twin Towers. It was his first day on the job. Not long after that, he did flew multiple combat tours in the Middle East and then retired from the Air Force. Here’s Peter with the story about the phone call he received shortly after his retirement: "Do You Still Have Your Uniform?"

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib and this is Our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American
people who search for the Our American Stories podcast go
to the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
On the morning of September eleventh, two thousand and one,
Peter Braxton was the first military pilot in the air

(00:32):
over the burning Twin Towers in Lower Manhattan. It was
his first day on the job. Not long after, he
did multiple tours of flight combat in the Middle East
and then retired from the Air Force. Here's Peter with
the story about the phone call he received shortly after
his retirement.

Speaker 2 (00:50):
You know, I was a distinguished graduate, and why didn't
you fly at fifteen's or F twenty two is or
F sixteen's And you're gonna remember, I want.

Speaker 3 (00:57):
To be a doctor. Ab this is the war. See.

Speaker 2 (01:02):
I was homesick. I wanted to go home. I promise
you if the closest Air Force base to where I
grew up was a fighter base, I would have picked
a fighter. I wanted to go home, and I was
happy with my choice until one day I was listening
to this Israeli F sixteen fighter pilot and he said, well,
you know, well why did I fly a fighter? And

(01:23):
he said, because it was personal. We were being attacked
in my neighborhood and my sister was there. And you
can fly in F sixteen across Israel and twenty two seconds,
you know, I mean that's how small the country is,
kind of widthwise, and you know, for him, it was personal.
And I remember thinking, you know, what if this was,

(01:46):
if this was a day after nine, if this.

Speaker 3 (01:49):
Yeah, it's personal. Right.

Speaker 2 (01:51):
I'm from New York and so an interesting story that
I've told is after I got out of the Air
Force and I was full out.

Speaker 3 (02:00):
I was in business school.

Speaker 2 (02:03):
I got a call from the Pentagon and the voice
on the phone said, hey, this is Peter Braxton.

Speaker 3 (02:10):
Yes it is. Do you still have your uniform? Yes?

Speaker 2 (02:16):
I have my uniform. It's been a couple of months.
Does it still fit? You know, I'm not sitting on
the couch eating Cheetos. Yeah, I mean still fits. But
you know, everyone who's been in the military knows it's illegal.
You're not allowed to wear your uniform after you get out.
It's you know, you can keep it, you can't wear it.

(02:36):
And so this colonel said, hey, can you meet me
at Scott Air Force Base, Illinois, and you know, meet
me Saturday morning, ten am at this building. And I'm like,
is this is you know some of my buddies.

Speaker 3 (02:52):
This is a joke.

Speaker 2 (02:53):
There's another, this is another you know who is this?
He says, it's a Colonel so and so, and we'd
like to talk to you. And I was like, okay,
the joke's on you. Like, I'm not supposed to do this.
So I'm out of the Air Force.

Speaker 3 (03:10):
It's a Saturday.

Speaker 2 (03:12):
I show up and it was like a Jason Bourne
kind of boardroom with a big lawn table and six
kernels wearing full service dress uniform, which you know you
don't see that unless you're at a funeral. I mean
at a funeral, right, So and So I sat down
and they said, no, you sit over there at the

(03:33):
other end. So I sat at the very end of
the other table and they sat at the other end.
This table sat like twenty four people and proceeded to
interview me for the job of Air Force two. This
is Dick Cheney back in the day two thousand and seven.
And you know, I mean I was a gentleman like

(03:54):
I'm I'm out, like we can change that with one signature.

Speaker 3 (04:00):
And so I talked to.

Speaker 2 (04:00):
Them and they kind of offered me.

Speaker 3 (04:03):
That offered me the job. Just think about it. Talk
to your family. So I did.

Speaker 2 (04:06):
I called my brother and he said, Pete, you know,
you spent all this time deploying and and and you know,
getting into taking the g MAT and getting into business
school and getting out of the Air Force. You want
to go back in and this is the I mean,
it's the ultimate job, right, It's the ultimate. It's like
the Thunderbirds for heavy transport air feeling jets. So, you know,

(04:30):
honored to be asked. So I remember I got the
job at Credit Sweee over the summer, and.

Speaker 3 (04:37):
You know, they asked me not to shop it, like don't.

Speaker 2 (04:39):
Go to don't go across the street to JP Morgan
or Goldman, and kind of like try to get a job.
Just you know, if you want the job, take the job.
You don't tell us. And so I remember saying I
want the job. And I went back to the president
of the bank, the managing director, and I said, sir,
you know, I got a question. Can I defer this

(05:02):
for a year? I need to go back and try
to do this. And he said, you know, congratulations, that's
an amazing honor. But no, you can't defer it. You
either take the job or you have to give to
somebody else. I said, okay, So I ran back and
you know, and I called the guys up the Pentagon.

(05:22):
I said, hey, can I defer this for a year?

Speaker 3 (05:26):
I'd liked I'd.

Speaker 2 (05:27):
Spend all this time going to business school. I got
this job and investment bank. I'd love to do that,
but I just need a year and then I can
kind of like, They're like, no, you got to either
take the job.

Speaker 3 (05:38):
You know.

Speaker 2 (05:39):
Now it's not an exploiting offer, but it's not guaranteed.
We just have this need and and so I kind
of thought long andheard, and I had flown at that point,
I had flown Donald Renfield around in the Casey ten,
the Casey ten. You know, I would say, by intensive purposes,
the fastest jet in the world, because.

Speaker 3 (05:58):
We don't have to stop.

Speaker 2 (06:00):
We can sustain point nine to two mock almost indefinitely
if we have enough fuel, and then we can get refueled.
And so I ultimately turned the job down. And you know,
this is another funny true story. My roommate from the
Air Force Academy is currently the commander of Air Force one.

(06:23):
Now I'm not going to say his name because he's
not posting the stuff on social media, and I don't
think he really wants everyone to know. You know that
he's the seventeenth ever presidential pilot. So he flew for
Obama and then Trump and then now Biden and potentially
whoever is either a re elected or elected next. But

(06:47):
he got the job, and he's an outstanding American and
a great avior, and.

Speaker 1 (06:53):
A terrific job on the production editing and storytelling by
our own Greg Hangler, and a special thanks to Peter
Braxton for sharing the story of the interview. He got
to be the pilot of Air Force too after graduating
with a master's of Business and accepting a job offer
at Credit Suisse.

Speaker 3 (07:11):
Which way did he go? Which should he choose?

Speaker 1 (07:13):
Well he chose in the end his future life as
a civilian. But what a job offer. It was the
story of Peter Brason's first job after his military service.
Here on Our American Stories, Lee Hibibe here the host

(07:33):
of our American Stories. Every day on this show, we're
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(07:56):
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