Little Rock Snapshot: Capt. Jacob Johnson

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  • By 19th Airlift Wing Public Affairs
LITTLE ROCK AIR FORCE BASE, Ark. --  Little Rock Snapshot- Capt. Jacob Johnson
Staff Sgt. Jessica Condit

Q: SSgt Condit: What is your rank, full name and duty title?
A: Capt. Johnson: I'm Captain Jacob Riley Johnson, and a duty title I'm the permanent party flight commander and also a pilot.

Q: Do you like being a pilot?
A: Yeah! It's not like you see in the movies, where it's all glamorous and everything.

Q: Like Top Gun?
A: Right! Which is fine. I don't know if I can live like that, but it's um, I really like flying. It's what I wanted to do since I was little, but you know, now I get to do it.

Q: How long have you been in the Air Force?
A: Since Sept. of 2003 so coming up on 10 years.

Q: How long have you been at Little Rock?
A: Almost five years. Yeah, May of 2008 we moved here. I'll be here at least another couple because I just came to this squadron.

Q: Why did you join the Air Force?
A: Well like I said before, I always wanted to fly. And I didn't think I could because my eye sight is not great. And then after Sept. 11, I was already out of college and grad school when that happened. Yes I'm kinda old. But anyway, I felt like I needed to do something, but I didn't just want to just like enlist in the Army; you know what I'm saying? So I decided to apply, and I had heard that you could get the eyesight waiver and get the pilot slot, so I decided to give it a shot!

Q: Was it hard to come into the Air Force, because it's a totally different lifestyle?
A: I remember, I was just talking to someone about this the other day. My first morning or whatever at OTS thinking, because they drag you out of bed at 4 a.m., you know, lots of yelling, and I remember thinking to myself what am I doing? Five days ago I was playing golf with my friends, and now I'm getting yelled at in Montgomery. I don't understand what I'm doing. But, you know, you live and learn and figure things out, like you went through basic so, same type thing. You adjust.

Q: So what would your dream job be if you weren't a pilot and you were a civilian?
A: I think it would be a lot of fun to be on sports talk radio or something. I think that would be awesome! Because it just sounds like some of those guys that are on sports talk are just sitting around talking about sports like I do with my friends and getting paid for it. I don't know if I'd be good at it but it would be fun to try.

Q: Tell me about the race that you are about to run.
A: It's a 12K Cross Country, which is like 7.5 miles almost exactly. Some people say kilometers in this country, and they're like kilometers, huh? But anyway, I ran a 12K up in St. Louis the first weekend of this month, was it February 2nd? But anyway, I had to finish top 12 military to qualify for Serbia, and I think I was actually 13th or 14th, but a couple guys in front of me couldn't go, so they just go down the list. So it's exciting. I've done one of these; it's called Conseil International du Sport Militaire Cross Country Championship. It's basically an international competition between militaries, and they have it for marathon and they have it for cross-countries. I don't know if there's a track one. But anyway, I did one in Athens, Greece for the Athens Marathon a couple years ago, and that was a real good experience. You get to meet people from other countries who are in the military, and it's a neat experience.

Q: Who's the most interesting person you've met?
A: Like I said, I've only really done one of these overseas. I did meet a girl; she was Romanian. We were running together almost the whole race in Athens, and I barely beat her. But anyway, she was an Olympian. She was in the Olympics this summer, and she did pretty well in the Olympic Marathon. So that was neat.

Q: How many races have you run?
A: I've run a lot of races over the years. I have no idea.

Q: Over 100?
A: Oh yeah.

Q: Over 200?
A: I don't know about that.

Q: Over 150?
A: Certainly over 100. I've been running since 8th grade so like 20 plus years you know, 10-20 races a year. The last few years I haven't raced that much because I've been deploying, but it's probably close to 200.

Q: If there was one person in history that you could race, who would it be?
A: Um. I don't know, because anyone I say is going to be way faster than me. I don't know, that's a tough question. It would have been neat to be alive during Steve Prefontane's era. Again, I would have had no chance of beating Steve Prefontane, but it would have been cool to like, be at some races where he was running just to experience that.