Hamilton SE Director of Transportation shares time in Air Force, flying Air Force Two
FISHERS, Ind. (WISH) — “You never know what’s going to happen from one day to the next. but you know you just gotta make it happen,” said Jim White.
That could be the motto for Jim White’s life.
“We’re pretty busy from about 6 o’ clock to about 9 o’ clock,” he said.
Each day different from the next.
“We have 1,000 in our fleet,” he said about the buses in the parking lot at the Hamilton Southeastern transportation center.
But boy has he made it happen.
Not only as his job as Director of Transportation for Hamilton Southeastern Schools, but also what he did starting back in 1973.
“It was, the tail end of the Vietnam War. So, I made a lot of trips over southeast Asia. I got involved in the refugee airlift out of southeast Asia and Operation Baby Lift and we brought a lot of the orphans out of southeast Asia,” White said.
He was able to help many with a variety of missions.
“I did a lot of nuclear airlift missions, flying nuclear weapons from our depots here in the states to various locations,” he said.
And when he was all done with that, he made it happen flight after flight on Air Force Two.
He did a lot of flying with then Vice President George H.W. Bush.
“Especially during his presidential campaign, we were all over the country taking him to campaign stops,” White said.
He flew first ladies.
“Nancy Reagan flew her quite often, then Barbara Bush,” he said.
He also flew with heads of state.
“I flew the prime minister of Israel several times,” he said.
And he flew some famous Hoosiers.
“The first time we flew the Quayles, we were flying over here to Indianapolis and I sent the card back and I said ‘It’s a great day for a race’, cause they were going to the 500 as well as a couple other things and I said ‘Both of your pilots are Hoosiers’ and in about five minutes they were both up in the cockpit.”
The cockpit was where he made it happen.
“If you counted up the number of flying miles, it would probably equate to flying around the world 22 times, something like that,” he said.
Even with one day always different from the next.