A career in the Air Force involved adventure and advancement

Jack Meadows left school in the eighth grade, because at that time he felt more in need of a job than an education.

“I picked cotton, delivered newspapers and washed dishes in a restaurant, but I had no training whatsoever,” Meadows says.

His future was uncertain before he enlisted in the U.S. Air Force at age 17. And before he retired 25 years later as a master sergeant, he had already earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees, not to mention his many adventures.

“I feel like I’ve lived multiple lives,” Meadows says. “How can you do all that in one life? And in two years I’ll be 90 years old.”

Shortly after basic training, Meadows began working as a mechanic on a KC-97 Stratotanker. This gave him the opportunity to fly on a mission over England to refuel B-52 bombers and to support operations in Greenland, Newfoundland, Saudi Arabia, the Azores and Bermuda.

He subsequently received training in nuclear missile operations and was involved in the launch of the Titan II missile at Little Rock Air Force Base.

After retiring, he became a social worker, then a real estate agent, all the while volunteering for various charities, delivering meals to the elderly, collecting bicycles, and supporting abused and neglected children. In 2000, he became a founding trustee of the Jacksonville Museum of Military History.

Meadows had a rough start.

His mother, a cook in a restaurant near the Air National Guard base in Memphis, raised her five children single-handedly.

“We were dumped with my father, a disabled veteran of World War I, and I had to help care for him and raise three younger siblings. My childhood was an absolute disaster,” he says. “My mother kept us in church and fed us, and I don’t know how she did it.”

His mother had seen the National Guard men, dressed in uniform, in the restaurant where she worked.

“She was so impressed and said, ‘Jackie — that was my nickname — I wish you would do something like that,'” Meadows says. “I said, ‘Stop talking, Mom. Sign for me. I’m ready.’ She knew I would never amount to anything if I didn’t join the Army.”

His job as an engineer on a KC Strato tanker gave him the opportunity to work with the Strategic Air Command on the first worldwide refueling of B-52 bombers.

“This was a special assignment. We had to fly through North Africa to Saudi Arabia and help refuel the first B-52 flight around the world, from California to the other side of the world. All the B-52s were refueled in the air and never touched the ground,” he said.

He was very happy to be allowed to go on the mission, and even happier when he was allowed to watch through the airplane window as the bomber filled up with fuel in the air.

“I jumped in that plane like a kid with a toy,” he says. “Right before hookup, my boom operator Ben Simmons said, ‘Jack, do you want to take a closer look at this?’ It was under a full moon over Saudi Arabia at night. I said, ‘Man, this is a long way from the cotton fields in northeast Arkansas.'”

In 1963, he was cross-trained in nuclear missile operations as a launch technician for the Titan II missile and was stationed at Little Rock Air Force Base. The following year, he was promoted to launch instructor.

“There was a liquid-fueled rocket in the silo ready to go, and we weren’t sure if it would work, so every few years they would take it out of the silo and take it to California to launch it. I was on one of those work crews,” he says. “I got to go out there and do that. I just missed launching a Titan rocket. A crew relieved us at 7:30 and they launched it at 11:00. I watched it disappear, but I could have launched a Titan II rocket within a couple of hours.”

Meadows was the top performer in the USAF Non-Commissioned Officer Preparatory Course and years later received the Military Training Award from the Strategic Air Command Non-Commissioned Officer Academy.

“I decided I needed to do more, so I got my bachelor’s degree from Louisiana Tech University,” he says.

His degree in social sciences brought new responsibilities: helping families on base.

“I’m really interested in counseling, teaching and human relationships,” says Meadows, who is quick to make a “dad joke” or lighthearted historical anecdote during her volunteer work at the Jacksonville museum. “I’m a natural people person.”

Meadows says he was the first student — and the only noncommissioned officer in his class — to complete a master’s degree through Webster University on the base. It took him eight years, and when he finished, he was hired as the program’s director.

“I got my master’s degree in human relations at 42, and I just kept going up and up,” he says. “I was promoted to the senior instructor — the best instructor in the entire wing. I know that sounds like bragging, but it’s a fact, all documented.”

At age 88, he takes the opportunity to tour the museum in Jacksonville, volunteer where he can, and spend time talking and traveling with his family.

During a recent trip out West with his son and daughter-in-law, he visited the Titan Missile Museum and the Pima Air and Space Museum in Pima, Arizona. He found the KC-97 Stratotanker he was working on.

“I stood in the desert looking at my plane with goose bumps,” he says. “I can’t believe I got to do everything I did.”

If you have an interesting story about an Arkansan 70 years or older, please call (501) 425-7228 or email:

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Jack Meadows grew up in Jonesboro and dropped out of high school in the eighth grade. By the time he retired after 25 years in the U.S. Air Force, he had a master’s degree and many adventures to share. He has spent much of his post-retirement years volunteering. “I can tell you that I am a volunteer through and through,” he says. “I’m involved in so many things you wouldn’t believe. I also won the Dow Jones-Wall Street Journal Student Achievement Award. They were impressed that I only had an eighth-grade education.” (Special to the Democrat-Gazette)