Every team member at King Aerospace is proud to serve their country and answer the needs of its government and armed forces, as demonstrated by their commitment to servant leadership and devotion to God, Country, and Family at locations across the U.S. and around the globe.
Those values are also exemplified by Bo Wafford, author of “From First Life to the Last Hunt” and a longtime friend of the King family. Although it’s been 50 years since he retired from the U.S. Air Force, he’s quick to share how his service changed his life and his perspective.
“The Air Force grew me up,” Wafford says with a slight chuckle.
Born into poverty during the Great Depression, Wafford learned at a young age the values of hard work and serving others. From picking cotton in Oklahoma (when he was supposed to be in elementary school in Texas) to helping out on the family farm and performing whatever other odd jobs he could find, Wafford did everything he could to help support his parents and four siblings.
Once he turned 17, and with just an eighth grade education—but also an intuitive sense of working with machinery—Wafford moved with a friend to Fort Worth to find steadier employment. That ultimately led him to Temco Aircraft Company, where he built airplanes used in the Korean War.
While he liked the job, Temco’s military contract lapsed with the end of that war, and he was soon out of work. Wafford then opted to enlist in the U.S. Air Force in November 1953, where after basic training he went to school to become an aircraft mechanic.
“My education was very limited before that,” he shares, “but I could figure out anything mechanical, and I always liked airplanes.”
Wafford graduated near the top of his class in May 1954. Following his first assignment in Goose Bay, Newfoundland and Labrador maintaining the T-33 Shooting Star (he was supposed to go to Germany, but he switched with another airman to be that much closer to home) Wafford later served in Europe, and at bases in Texas, California and Florida.
In addition to earning his flight engineer wings on the C-124 Globemaster (“Old Shaky”) and C-141 Starlifter, Wafford also found time not only to get married and start a family, but also to become a private pilot and instrument flight instructor.
Lessons learned in the service complemented Wafford’s upbringing and the importance of hard work and perseverance. He earned several promotions throughout his 21-year USAF career before retiring in 1974 as a master sergeant.
“Anything that needed doing, I was ready to do it,” he says. “I didn’t slough off. That got me ahead of some people who were certainly a lot smarter than I was.”
Taking the Show on the Road
A similar commitment to purpose, resourcefulness, and service is a hallmark of King Aerospace. Among the ways the company demonstrates this mission-critical focus is through “Roadshow” teams offering expert, on-demand, and on-site maintenance and repair services wherever needed.
Comprised of the best technicians and maintenance professionals, these teams may spend anywhere from a few days to several months on-site, performing time-sensitive repairs, scheduled maintenance and other tasks requested by the customer on aircraft ranging from turboprops to large jets.
Recently, King Aerospace Roadshow crews arrived at military installations in the Midwest to provide specialized periodic depot maintenance (PDM)—from fuel tank and wing/body fairing inspections to advanced avionics work—on special purpose aircraft based on a widebody commercial platform.
Those successful outings resulted in several additional Roadshow opportunities this year, including on-site services for a highly specialized VVIP aircraft. No matter what is required or where the need may be, King Aerospace is ready to answer our country’s call.
That can-do spirit echoes Wafford’s experiences in the military, where he learned above all, “to appreciate people older than me and to do my job,” advice he also shares with today’s airmen.
“If I was sitting around during flight check as a mechanic and the floor needed sweeping, I’d grab a broom and start sweeping,” he continues. “People would ask why, and I’d say, ‘it needs sweeping and I’m not doing anything right now, but they’re still paying me to work.'”
Service to Country, Service to All
After his retirement from the USAF, Wafford applied his lifelong interest in the great outdoors to become an acclaimed hunting guide, from the woods at the Y.O. Ranch in Mountain Home, Texas, to around the globe in locations including Australia, Uruguay, and Alaska.
It was on one of those hunts where Wafford met King Aerospace Founder and Chairman Jerry Allan King-Echeverria, an experience that led to a decadeslong relationship between their two families.
Wafford has even helped support the company through another one of his interests, traveling with King Aerospace to feed Texas barbecue (with meat from his own hunts) to service members and their families at an Air Force base in Florida and a U.S. Navy installation in Washington State.
“The squadron commander [in Texas] wasn’t sure at first about us feeding everyone,” recalls King. “There were other contractors on the base, and he didn’t want to get in trouble. I told him, ‘That’s okay, we’ll feed them too!'”
“Jerry is very much a gentleman,” Wafford adds. “He’s one of the most important and influential people I know, but at those barbecues he’d sit in the background and watch. It was his party, but the party wasn’t about him. He just wanted everyone to enjoy themselves.”
Those travels also provided Wafford the chance to share his lessons of the importance of service with Jarid King, who Wafford has watched grow up from a seven-year-old boy to become a father, a pilot and now the president of King Aerospace.
“He’s really turned out to be a nice young man,” he says of Jarid. “Coming from that family, he could not be anything else. Lots of sons don’t mature quite like how their [fathers] did, but Jarid is incredibly sharp, very responsible and very knowledgeable about the company. I think they’re in very good hands.”