8 August 2024

Every team member at King Aerospace is proud to serve their country and meet the needs of their government and military, as demonstrated by their commitment to servant leadership and devotion to God, country and family at locations across the United States and around the world.

These values ​​are also embodied by Bo Wafford, author of From First Life to the Last Hunt and longtime friend of the King family. Although he has been retired from the U.S. Air Force for 50 years, he is happy to share how his service changed his life and his perspective.

“The Air Force raised me,” Wafford says with a slight giggle.

Born into poverty during the Great Depression, Wafford learned the values ​​of hard work and service to others from a young age. From picking cotton in Oklahoma (when he was supposed to be in elementary school in Texas) to helping out on the family farm and doing whatever other odd jobs he could find, Wafford did whatever he could to support his parents and four siblings.

When he turned 17 and had only an eighth-grade education – but also an intuitive sense for working with machines – Wafford moved to Fort Worth with a friend to find more permanent employment. That eventually led him to the Temco Aircraft Company, where he built planes that were used in the Korean War.

Although he enjoyed the work, Temco’s military contract expired at the end of the war and he soon found himself unemployed. Wafford then decided to join the US Air Force in November 1953, where he trained as an aircraft mechanic after basic training.

“My previous training was very limited,” he says, “but I knew all about mechanical things and I’ve always liked airplanes.”

Wafford graduated in May 1954 as one of the top enlisted pilots in his class. After his first assignment in Goose Bay, Newfoundland and Labrador, where he maintained the T-33 Shooting Star (he was supposed to go to Germany but swapped with another pilot to be closer to home), Wafford later served in Europe and at bases in Texas, California and Florida.

In addition to earning his flight engineer badges on the C-124 Globemaster (“Old Shaky”) and the C-141 Starlifter, Wafford also found time to not only get married and start a family, but also to become a private pilot and instrument flight instructor.

The lessons learned in the service complemented Wafford’s upbringing and the importance of hard work and perseverance. During his 21-year career in the USAF, he was promoted several times before retiring as a Master Sergeant in 1974.

“I was willing to do whatever needed to be done,” he says. “I didn’t hold back. That gave me a head start on some people who were certainly much smarter than me.”

On tour with the show

A similar commitment to purpose, ingenuity and service is a hallmark of King Aerospace. One way the company demonstrates this mission-critical focus is through “roadshow” teams that provide expert on-site maintenance and repair services when needed.

These teams consist of the best technicians and maintenance professionals and can spend anywhere from a few days to several months on site to perform time-critical repairs, scheduled maintenance and other customer-requested tasks on aircraft ranging from turboprops to large jets.

Recently, King Aerospace Roadshow teams arrived at military bases across the Midwest to perform specialized periodic depot maintenance (PDM) on commercial wide-body platform-based specialty aircraft – from inspection of fuel tanks and wing/fuselage fairings to advanced avionics work.

These successful outings led to 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 is, King Aerospace is ready to answer our country’s call.

That drive reflects Wafford’s experiences in the military, where he learned, above all, to “appreciate people who are older than me and to do my job” – advice he also passes on to today’s airmen.

“When I was a mechanic sitting around during flight control and the floor needed to be swept, I would grab a broom and start sweeping,” he continues. “People would ask why, and I would say, ‘It needs to be swept and I’m not doing anything right now, but they’re still paying me for my work.'”

Service to the country, service to all

After leaving the U.S. Air Force, Wafford capitalized on his lifelong interest in the outdoors and became a recognized hunting guide, from the woods of the YO Ranch in Mountain Home, Texas, to assignments around the globe, including in Australia, Uruguay and Alaska.

It was on one of these hunts that Wafford met King Aerospace founder and chairman Jerry Allan King-Echeverria. That experience sparked a decades-long relationship between the two families.

Wafford has even supported the company through another of his interests: He traveled with King Aerospace to deliver Texas barbecue (using meat from his own hunt) to military personnel and their families at an Air Force base in Florida and a U.S. Navy base in Washington state.

“The squadron commander (in Texas) wasn’t sure at first if we should feed everyone,” King recalls. “There were other contract workers on the base and he didn’t want to get in trouble. I told him, ‘That’s OK, we’ll feed them too!'”

“Jerry is a gentleman,” Wafford adds. “He’s one of the most important and influential people I know, but at these barbecues he sat in the background and watched. It was his party, but the party wasn’t about him. He just wanted everyone to have fun.”

During these trips, Wafford also had the opportunity to share his experiences about the meaning of service with Jarid King, whom Wafford has watched grow from a seven-year-old boy to a father, pilot and current president of King Aerospace.

“He’s really developed into a nice young man,” he says of Jarid. “Coming from this family, he couldn’t be any different. A lot of sons don’t develop like their (fathers), but Jarid is incredibly sharp, very responsible and very knowledgeable about the company. I think they’re in very good hands.”