Anyone who grew up with Jim Arnold in the backwoods of
Macedonia knows he's a country boy, so it was no surprise
when he retired in McKenzie just after his old buddy,
Charlie Cooper, had also come home to roost. The fellows are
seen here and there about town, making up for lost time and
spreading cheerful smiles in their wake.
Jim was the oldest of four children in the farm family led
by parents Howard and Frances Arnold, followed by Joyce,
Johnny and Mary Jane. Joyce and husband Dewey Ellis live in
McKenzie, as does Johnny.
Jim has fond memories of his growing years: "It was kind of
neat growing up out there," he smiles. "Everybody was in the
same boat together in the late '40s, early '50s, just after
the Depression; we enjoyed it, we had a lot of fun."
With no video games, computers, or even TV, the children had
to make their own fun. "You had to have an imagination,"
says Jim, recalling games of horseshoes, pitching washers,
and a lot of baseball, especially on weekends. All the
country grocery stores, such as Milam, Rochelle, and Mixie--however
diminutive--sponsored baseball teams that played on Sundays.
Depending on the season, volleyball was another big
attraction, as was card playing that took place at various
homes in the evening. Then there was the country-boy staple:
fishing and hunting. Jim remembers coon hunting being more
prominent in those days when men worked all day and hunted
at night and on weekends.
"My dad went coon hunting three or four nights a week," he
says. He has fond memories as well of his granddaddy taking
him to town by horse and buggy, dropping him off at the
theater where he could watch a movie or two for a dime.
"For a quarter you could enjoy the whole afternoon," he
says. "The theater was the big attraction around McKenzie.
He attended school in Macedonia through the eighth grade.
"It was one big room," says Jim of the schoolhouse that was
divided by a telescoping wall to allow grades one through
four to be taught on one side and five to eight on the
other.
It was a huge adjustment to make when, in the ninth grade,
the country kids moved into the two-story high school in
McKenzie.
"We weren't used to bells ringing, changing rooms and going
up and down stairs," says Jim, noting he played
football--"or tried to"--in high school. "I was more of a
substitute than anything," he says, before mentioning a name
that becomes a familiar thread in his story: "My best friend
was Charlie Cooper."
After high school, Jim and other friends Bobby Putman and
Kenneth Brannon commuted together to the university that was
then called UTMB: University of Tennessee--Martin Branch.
"After a year I realized it just wasn't right for me at that
point," says Jim. He went to Gary, Indiana, where Charlie
had moved, and got a job in the same steel mill where he was
working.
"That wasn't right for me either," laughs Jim. So, he and
Charlie decided to join the Navy. Unfortunately, Charlie had
a knee problem that prevented him from serving. He went back
to Indiana and Jim spent the next 23 years in the Navy.
"We kind of got separated for awhile--forty-something
years," Jim says. Occasional phone calls and a couple of
visits were all that spanned the busy years.
 |
|
Jim Arnold (left) and
Charlie Cooper were best friends growing up in the
Macedonia community. They moved back to McKenzie after
retiring and are frequently seen together about town
enjoying life in the small city.. |
Jim attended boot camp in San Diego and prep school in
Norman, Oklahoma, where test scores and proficiency ratings
landed him with the job as an air traffic controlman, early
warning crew member on a Lockheed, four-engine aircraft
called the "Super Constellation". Part of the North American
Air Defense Command, the crew flew radar reconnassiance
missions from Midway Island to Alaska in a vigil against the
possibility of enemy aircraft coming across the northern
Pacific. He accumulated 4,000 hours in the air in
accomplishment of his duties.
At his next duty station in Olathe, Kansas he assumed the
duties of a more modern version of air traffic controller.
"That was great--to me, that was the start of what I really
enjoyed doing," he says. "You have to love it to be good at
it."
While allowing all jobs are stressful in their own ways, Jim
characterizes the air traffic controllers' position as
unique because they are confronted with situations in which
sometimes life and death decisions must be made
instantaneously. Controllers can work no more than two hours
without a break and no more than ten hours in a day, except
during an emergency.
Nevertheless, he says, "It's probably the most interesting
job in the world; no two days are the same."
He laughs, while describing how technology has advanced the
monitoring techniques of air traffic controllers, that
nowadays when minimum standards aren't adhered to, "circuits
on the radar squeal on you--alarms go off."
He continues, "I grew up from when an airplane was a blip on
the radar screen and we had to remember a lot. Now it's
digitized, computerized; the world of computers has come a
long way, with air traffic especially."
Other duty stations worked during Jim's Navy career, along
with Midway Island in the mid-Pacific, included Moffett
Field in California and the South Texas naval bases at
Beeville, Corpus Christi, and Kingsville.
Retiring from the Navy at Kingsville in 1980 meant only a
new job at the same airport, bereft of uniform. It was after
his retirement, too, that he met Linda.
"We just matched up and here we are 20 years later," he
says. Linda's daughter Kym (Kym Langevine, now visiting the
Arnolds from her home in France) spent most of her growing
years in the new family. Linda's son, Sean Kyle, is a
student of Bethel's physician assistant program and her son,
Greg, lives in Colorado. Jim's daughter, Cindee, her
husband, Charlie, and three children live in Waco, Texas.
His son, James Jr., his wife, Jen, and "going-on five
children" live in Denton, Texas.
"My wife and I both enjoyed Southern Texas, but it was hot,"
he says regarding their early years together.
As they both also loved to travel, he began bidding on jobs
in the civilian sector that took him back to Corpus Christi,
Texas as a controller and Lake Charles, Louisiana, where for
three years he was a supervisor at a small airport. He then
transferred to Monroe, Louisiana where he says, the airport
was a little bigger and where he was also selected as
supervisor. Next came assignments as a manager at
Clarksburg, West Virginia, and Albany, New York.
Jim says he didn't see too many major catastrophes during
his forty plus years as an air traffic controller, but there
is one day he'll never forget.
It was a normal day at Albany Tower, 150 miles north of New
York City. As manager, he always spent the first hour in the
tower and the second in the radar room, observing and
passing on information to supervisors and controllers before
spending the rest of the day in administrative duties.
"That day I was sitting in the tower and somebody from the
radar room said, 'Chief, you'd better come down,'" Jim
relates. "I went down (to the radar room) and something was
happening in the city."
Looking around the corner at the television in the break
room, he saw an airplane had flown into the north tower of
the World Trade Center. It would soon be followed by a
second plane plowing into the south tower.
"I'd heard some weird sound when I was in the tower," he
said. The haunting sound, very fast, like a grunt, he had
thought was a mis-key of the emergency channel.
The order came to get every plane on the ground immediately.
"I'll bet in the United States at that time there were
5500-6000 airplane in the air in the lower 48 states," Jim
says. "In about two hours they were all on the ground."
Emergency rules were enacted that included a hotline manned
24 hours a day with Jim, as the manager, or one of three
supervisors in the facility at all times.
"That went on for weeks," he says.
Security was also tight, with armed guards controlling
access to the tower. National Guard units patrolled the
terminal areas.
"It went from a very flexible organization to very tightly
controlled," says Jim. No civilian aircraft was to get into
the air without prior authorization. With no planes flying
into or out of the United States, people were stranded in
airports and other locales within and outside of the
country. "It was very strenuous," says Jim. "Everything was
tightly controlled: there was total control for a long
time."
But trouble was scant after the attacks, Jim says, with the
exception of crop dusters working the fields and one small
plane pilot who was, incredibly, unaware of the events of
September 11.
He credits the smooth, post-attack operations to one man:
"Mayor Giuliani up there, he took charge," says Jim. "There
was no doubt he was going to get things done and get it
moving."
Jim says he doesn't expect air traffic controllers will ever
experience the freedom they knew before 9-11.
"Before all this happened--before they used airplanes as a
weapon--a hijacking normally meant they were going to land
somewhere and request to stay there. The whole mental
attitude (of air traffic controllers) had to change. Before,
they didn't have a lot of fear for life in a hijacking."
A year and a half later, in January 2003, Jim retired and he
and Linda moved to West Tennessee on April 11.
Although they enjoyed living in the Northeast, he says,
"We'd pretty much planned on coming back (to Tennessee.) I
wanted to be back where my roots started and be around
family and friends. Lots of people I grew up with are still
here."
He admits small-town life has taken a bit of getting used
to.
"It's a different lifestyle around here," he says, citing
the availability of services as a major difference from
living in or near large cities, such as Albany, where a
10-15 minutes drive would provide access to four-five major
malls.
But, he notes, "I always try to find the good points of a
place and make a habit to do things in good areas."
As to the future, Jim says, "This is it. We want to get
settled in here. I love to work in yards and fields,
bush-hogging and cleaning out stuff. We'll travel a little
and have the grandkids down; that's why we built this
place."
Jim and Linda recently moved into their four bedroom, three
bath dream home outside McKenzie near Carroll Lake. It
includes all the beauty and comfort she could design into it
while, outside, it has all the earmarks of home for
Jim--just enough grass, trees and clear blue sky to calm the
soul of a country boy.
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