Love Letters
In 2019 Tom Cruise began a publicity tour for the much-anticipated sequel to his 1986 blockbuster Top Gun. In an interview with Conan O’Brien he said the sequel would be a “love letter to Naval Aviation.” We now know that the summer 2020 release date came and went, as did multiple other planned theater releases. Ironically, I was relieved with the first delay because had it occurred as scheduled I would have been in month five of a nearly eight-month deployment; however, subsequent delays certainly disappointed.
Throughout the two-year buildup to its eventual release numerous promos and trailers were unveiled. Each time I heard that phrase, “a love letter to Naval Aviation.” I wondered what that would look like on the big screen? Last Friday my wife (herself a former Naval Aviator) and I took our son to the local IMAX theater to find out. What I saw was indeed a fitting tribute to the men and women that make Naval Aviation the finest fraternity in the world. If Tom wanted to call it his “love letter,” sure, but I left thinking of it instead as a coda to a personal adventure I embarked on more than twenty years ago.
As the son of a sailor, I grew up around Naval Aviation. Some of my earliest memories are of airshows, the Blue Angels, and the intoxicating aroma of jet fuel. I played little league baseball on fields at the same naval air station where I would later learn to fly. If you had asked me in 1986 what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would have said either a professional baseball player or a Navy pilot. My inability to hit a curve ball eventually narrowed the choice.
In 1986 the original served as an opening, a nudge, and the flicker of a flame that would burn hot for a long time. Watching the sequel was, before anything else, fun, but it also served as a closing exclamation point to a chapter of my life — some cinematic symmetry. Sitting with my son last week I got to see old friends make cameos. I got to see breathtaking aerial scenes shot in the same mountains where, as a young pilot, I learned a thing or two about limits and pushing them. I got to revisit the perfectly choreographed chaos this is the flight deck of an aircraft carrier. I got to relive some of the best and worst moments, the highs and the painful lows, that defined my time in a flight suit. In each of the characters I saw an amalgamation of countless personalities I got to fly with. My wife and I got to whisper to our boy, “that’s where we used to fly,” and “that’s the guy you got to meet last year,” and “that’s where I used to work,” and more than a few times “that’s not at all how it works…” I got to share with my son a two hour, sometimes ridiculous and sometimes remarkably accurate, depiction of the last twenty years of my life.
At one point Maverick, in a moment of vulnerability, confesses that being a pilot isn’t what he does, it’s who he is. I’ve spent quite a bit of time since retirement working through similar thoughts and I’ve become comfortable with a different feeling. While I’m incredibly proud of having been a Naval Aviator, it wasn’t who I was, but…after sitting together as we unpacked Tom Cruise’s “love letter,” I hope my son can better understand why I was so sad when I finally walked away from it. I hope he saw (or in the future will see) why I loved what I did and the people I did it with.
Maybe a seed was planted in the back of his mind like was mine the first time I saw the original. Maybe not. Flying fast jets from the decks of ships was my dream and I’ll be forever grateful for having had the opportunity to do it for as long as I did, but maybe it won’t be his. And if it turns out that there’s something else in the cards for him, whatever it is, I hope he chases it with the same passion his mother and I chased Naval Aviation. I hope he finds something deserving of its own love letter.
