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Current Staff Sgts. Daniel Grotte, left, and Joshua Grotte, two of Grant and Sharon's grandsons.[/caption]
The Grottes are not Air Force royalty. They are not descended from aviation pioneers, dogfighting legends or Pentagon insiders. But what the Grottes lack in profile, they more than make up for in volume.
Current Staff Sgts. Daniel Grotte, left, and Joshua Grotte, two of Grant and Sharon's grandsons.[/caption]
The Grottes are not Air Force royalty. They are not descended from aviation pioneers, dogfighting legends or Pentagon insiders. But what the Grottes lack in profile, they more than make up for in volume.
This family, rooted in the Midwest, claims a three-generation Air Force lineage four counting a stepfather in the pre-World War II Army Air Corps. The Grottes' ties to the service began in the buildup to World War II and end, for now, in hangars holding F-16s and KC-135s. They've produced eight airmen, almost all of them crew chiefs who were, or are, low-ranking sergeants.Through the decades, the family has observed the Air Force's dramatic transformation. Grotte hands have repaired clunky, destructive B-25 bombers, then supersonic T-38 trainers and now sleek and lightweight fighters.
But while the Air Force's technology has constantly evolved, the Grottes' reasons for enlisting have remained static. The patriotic satisfaction, valuable technical training and lessons on manhood delivered by the Air Force have again and again cemented their family calling.
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Grant Grotte was the first Grotte airman[/caption]
And it all started with a mechanic named Grant, a popcorn vendor and a color-blind girl at Sheppard Air Force Base, Texas.
The patriarch
For Grant Grotte, the Wisconsinite son of a paper mill mechanic, an assignment to Sheppard's propeller engine repair shop was a no-brainer. "As much as I resisted," he said, "my father's maintenance skills rubbed off on me."
It was the mid-1950s, the days before software diagnostics. Checking out a B-25's engine cylinders could involve reaching out to feel if they'd gone cold. It was enjoyable work, Grant said, and he decided to re-enlist pending a promotion to staff sergeant.
Grant Grotte was the first Grotte airman[/caption]
And it all started with a mechanic named Grant, a popcorn vendor and a color-blind girl at Sheppard Air Force Base, Texas.
The patriarch
For Grant Grotte, the Wisconsinite son of a paper mill mechanic, an assignment to Sheppard's propeller engine repair shop was a no-brainer. "As much as I resisted," he said, "my father's maintenance skills rubbed off on me."
It was the mid-1950s, the days before software diagnostics. Checking out a B-25's engine cylinders could involve reaching out to feel if they'd gone cold. It was enjoyable work, Grant said, and he decided to re-enlist pending a promotion to staff sergeant.
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Sharon Grotte married Grant while working for Air Force intelligence.[/caption]
One day, a married friend who sold popcorn at the base theater spied a girl he thought Grant would like. That young lady was Sharon, stepdaughter of an Army Air Corps crew chief. She worked intelligence back then, though supervisors shuffled her off photo intel once they realized she couldn't discern colors.
The vendor introduced himself and fixed her up with Grant.
They hit it off, so well that they were soon married, and Sharon was honorably discharged a year later for carrying a child. "They threw you out of the force for that back then," said Grant, now 73. Sharon, who died in 1996, became a homemaker, and the lifestyle stuck as they had a second, third and eventually sixth baby boy.
Grant wanted an Air Force career, but the slow demise of propeller planes crumbled his hopes of making staff sergeant. Blame it on the rising prominence of jet aircraft. Air Force leaders froze the reciprocating engine mechanic career field and promoted repairmen who tended to jet engines instead, prompting Grant to leave the service in 1958.
Sharon Grotte married Grant while working for Air Force intelligence.[/caption]
One day, a married friend who sold popcorn at the base theater spied a girl he thought Grant would like. That young lady was Sharon, stepdaughter of an Army Air Corps crew chief. She worked intelligence back then, though supervisors shuffled her off photo intel once they realized she couldn't discern colors.
The vendor introduced himself and fixed her up with Grant.
They hit it off, so well that they were soon married, and Sharon was honorably discharged a year later for carrying a child. "They threw you out of the force for that back then," said Grant, now 73. Sharon, who died in 1996, became a homemaker, and the lifestyle stuck as they had a second, third and eventually sixth baby boy.
Grant wanted an Air Force career, but the slow demise of propeller planes crumbled his hopes of making staff sergeant. Blame it on the rising prominence of jet aircraft. Air Force leaders froze the reciprocating engine mechanic career field and promoted repairmen who tended to jet engines instead, prompting Grant to leave the service in 1958.
"It was a good life while I was in," he said. "I didn't make a lot of money, but it was a good life."Grant needed work. After a stint in his father's paper mill, he landed a job repairing engines with Continental Airlines. This career move proved profoundly influential. Grant spent 37 years with the airline and established the Grotte family formula: Enlist. Get trained. Catch the crew chief bug and stick it out for life first as an airman, then as a civilian.
Band of brothers
It was the mid-1970s, and the Grotte boys were running wild in El Paso, Texas.
"We were really rough teenagers," said Mitch Grotte, Grant and Sharon's fourth son. "If anything happened in the neighborhood, they just called my mom."
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The Grotte family, from left: Mitchell, Rodney, Sharon, Grant, John (a Navy radio operator), Michael, Richard and George. Mitchell, Rodney, Grant, Richard and George were Air Force crew chiefs; Sharon worked for Air Force intelligence.[/caption]
Grant was working night shifts then, repairing engines with a small crew at the quiet local airport. At home, he was father to a stable of gearheads. Nearly all of the brothers George, John, Rick, Mitch, Michael and Rodney liked working with their hands and tweaking old muscle cars.
They'd load those cars with friends and dates and, later into the evening, roll out to the airport hangar to watch Grant repair planes. "I was out there as soon as I could drive," Mitch said. "Every Friday and Saturday night, I'd spend half the night handing him tools. Just learning the trade."
Rick was the first to enlist in the Air Force. Then Mitch. Then Rodney. John joined the Navy, Mitch said, "but we still talked to him anyway."
For the Grotte boys, the military offered the right recipe of practical skills and patriotic service. They grew up in a house where dad came home talking airplanes, and mom always stood for the national anthem even during televised baseball games. One by one, Mitch said, he and his brothers entered the service and exchanged their teenage mischief for discipline and hard work.
Mitch enlisted in 1979 and rose to the rank of buck sergeant, a now-defunct rank that straddled the line between senior airman and staff sergeant. "It was basically senior airman with a star," Mitch said. "They just gave you NCO responsibilities." He was stationed at the now-closed Reese Air Force Base, Texas, married to his high school sweetheart and working as a crew chief. Like his brothers, Mitch worked on T-38 Talon twin-engine jets, the world's first supersonic trainer and a jet that remains in service.
By his fourth year in the service, Mitch had grown weary of the monotony and the service's top-down structure. "We were pretty broke all the time, which is typical of enlisted guys," he said. He wanted more money, more difficult tasks. "I felt like a glorified gas station attendant."
So he followed his father's path. Mitch left and started at Continental, where he still works today. His brother Rick, who died two years ago, also repaired engines for Continental. Rodney, taking a slightly different path, began a career with the U.S. Postal Service after leaving the Air Force, and George became a civilian crew chief without military service.
"All of us that went in became crew chiefs. We did our time and got out," Mitch said. "None of us had a bad experience in the service. It actually helped us accomplish everything we wanted to accomplish."
The new breed
Cousins Josh and Daniel Grotte's exposure to the Air Force came one summer getaway at a time in the late 1980s and 1990s. Family gatherings took place at a lakeside cabin in northern Wisconsin, where Grant and his sons would debate the finer points of airplane mechanics.
"There was a lot of shop talk around the fire," said Daniel, Rick's son. "It was like they knew everything."
But back at home in the Houston area, the cousins were as disinterested in turning gears as most any kids in the Internet generation. Daniel was a trumpet prodigy with dreams of becoming a band director. Josh, Mitch's son, was a college scholarship-worthy football player. "We weren't mechanically minded," Josh said. "I didn't want to work on cars. I just wanted to chase girls and play sports."
Fast forward to 2003. Daniel, fresh out of music training at the University of Houston, realized directing public school bands didn't pay the bills. And Josh, after a semester playing football for the University of Wisconsin, had suffered a serious knee injury.
In a move the family didn't see coming, they both enlisted that spring just weeks apart.
"We wanted to be crew chiefs like our fathers," said Daniel, now a staff sergeant. "We all thought our dads were geniuses, but who doesn't? If it was good enough for our fathers, our heroes, it was good enough for us."
Now they are traveling the same path. Daniel, 26 and married, is a traveling crew chief for the Thunderbirds Air Demonstration Squadron.
And Josh, also 26 and married, repairs KC-135 air refueling and cargo jets. He's sewing on his staff sergeant stripes next spring. And he's one of the few Grottes who've seen war. Josh has deployed to Iraq five times.
Both cousins plan to leave the Air Force in coming years and find aircraft repair work in the civilian sector.
"I always thought I was a man before I came in," Josh said. "But being in the military has really made me into who I am. I didn't realize it until I got older, but the Air Force has really made our family what it is."
From his home in South Milwaukee, Grant said he never expected the Air Force would so strongly thread his family's identity. "I think of it quite a bit," he said. "I felt, and still do, that you owe the country some military service or service of some type. I never pressured any of my sons to go into the Air Force, but I'm happy they did."
As for sowing a fifth Air Force generation, the odds aren't bad. Grant is grandfather to 27 and great-grandfather to 13.
That's a lot of potential crew chiefs.
By Patrick Winn - Staff writer
The Grotte family, from left: Mitchell, Rodney, Sharon, Grant, John (a Navy radio operator), Michael, Richard and George. Mitchell, Rodney, Grant, Richard and George were Air Force crew chiefs; Sharon worked for Air Force intelligence.[/caption]
Grant was working night shifts then, repairing engines with a small crew at the quiet local airport. At home, he was father to a stable of gearheads. Nearly all of the brothers George, John, Rick, Mitch, Michael and Rodney liked working with their hands and tweaking old muscle cars.
They'd load those cars with friends and dates and, later into the evening, roll out to the airport hangar to watch Grant repair planes. "I was out there as soon as I could drive," Mitch said. "Every Friday and Saturday night, I'd spend half the night handing him tools. Just learning the trade."
Rick was the first to enlist in the Air Force. Then Mitch. Then Rodney. John joined the Navy, Mitch said, "but we still talked to him anyway."
For the Grotte boys, the military offered the right recipe of practical skills and patriotic service. They grew up in a house where dad came home talking airplanes, and mom always stood for the national anthem even during televised baseball games. One by one, Mitch said, he and his brothers entered the service and exchanged their teenage mischief for discipline and hard work.
Mitch enlisted in 1979 and rose to the rank of buck sergeant, a now-defunct rank that straddled the line between senior airman and staff sergeant. "It was basically senior airman with a star," Mitch said. "They just gave you NCO responsibilities." He was stationed at the now-closed Reese Air Force Base, Texas, married to his high school sweetheart and working as a crew chief. Like his brothers, Mitch worked on T-38 Talon twin-engine jets, the world's first supersonic trainer and a jet that remains in service.
By his fourth year in the service, Mitch had grown weary of the monotony and the service's top-down structure. "We were pretty broke all the time, which is typical of enlisted guys," he said. He wanted more money, more difficult tasks. "I felt like a glorified gas station attendant."
So he followed his father's path. Mitch left and started at Continental, where he still works today. His brother Rick, who died two years ago, also repaired engines for Continental. Rodney, taking a slightly different path, began a career with the U.S. Postal Service after leaving the Air Force, and George became a civilian crew chief without military service.
"All of us that went in became crew chiefs. We did our time and got out," Mitch said. "None of us had a bad experience in the service. It actually helped us accomplish everything we wanted to accomplish."
The new breed
Cousins Josh and Daniel Grotte's exposure to the Air Force came one summer getaway at a time in the late 1980s and 1990s. Family gatherings took place at a lakeside cabin in northern Wisconsin, where Grant and his sons would debate the finer points of airplane mechanics.
"There was a lot of shop talk around the fire," said Daniel, Rick's son. "It was like they knew everything."
But back at home in the Houston area, the cousins were as disinterested in turning gears as most any kids in the Internet generation. Daniel was a trumpet prodigy with dreams of becoming a band director. Josh, Mitch's son, was a college scholarship-worthy football player. "We weren't mechanically minded," Josh said. "I didn't want to work on cars. I just wanted to chase girls and play sports."
Fast forward to 2003. Daniel, fresh out of music training at the University of Houston, realized directing public school bands didn't pay the bills. And Josh, after a semester playing football for the University of Wisconsin, had suffered a serious knee injury.
In a move the family didn't see coming, they both enlisted that spring just weeks apart.
"We wanted to be crew chiefs like our fathers," said Daniel, now a staff sergeant. "We all thought our dads were geniuses, but who doesn't? If it was good enough for our fathers, our heroes, it was good enough for us."
Now they are traveling the same path. Daniel, 26 and married, is a traveling crew chief for the Thunderbirds Air Demonstration Squadron.
And Josh, also 26 and married, repairs KC-135 air refueling and cargo jets. He's sewing on his staff sergeant stripes next spring. And he's one of the few Grottes who've seen war. Josh has deployed to Iraq five times.
Both cousins plan to leave the Air Force in coming years and find aircraft repair work in the civilian sector.
"I always thought I was a man before I came in," Josh said. "But being in the military has really made me into who I am. I didn't realize it until I got older, but the Air Force has really made our family what it is."
From his home in South Milwaukee, Grant said he never expected the Air Force would so strongly thread his family's identity. "I think of it quite a bit," he said. "I felt, and still do, that you owe the country some military service or service of some type. I never pressured any of my sons to go into the Air Force, but I'm happy they did."
As for sowing a fifth Air Force generation, the odds aren't bad. Grant is grandfather to 27 and great-grandfather to 13.
That's a lot of potential crew chiefs.
By Patrick Winn - Staff writer