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Meet: Joe Wolozyn
Pilot Training InstructorAir Force Junior ROTC Program
What did you want to be when you were 10 years old?
I grew up in a small town in the heart of the Western Pennsylvania oil country called Oil City. My major interests as a kid were baseball and music. I have always played baseball and took twelve years of piano and brass instruments lessons. By the time I finished high school, all I wanted to do was become a high school band teacher. Both of the parents were musicians my mother a singer as well as housewife and my father (blind from birth) a piano tuner as well as an accomplished pianist and accordion player. Music has always been a large part of my life and my desire of becoming a teacher of music was in large part do their guidance as well as my admiration for my high school music teacher.
What educational background do you have, and is it typical of your field?
I departed for college with the intent on becoming a music teacher; however, things have a way of changing, and I found that music theory and I were not compatible, and that while I enjoyed music and playing several instruments, music as a profession was not to be. Instead, after four years of college, I earned a bachelors degree in English Literature, was commissioned a Second Lieutenant in the United States Air Force, and found myself on my way San Antonio , Texas to learn how to fly jet airplanes. I had always been fascinated with airplanes, but did not really understand just how much until I got the opportunity to become a pilot. I found that flying came to me naturally, and while I really had not intented on making the military a career, I spent the next 26 years flying a variety of USAF training and transport aircraft.
What kinds of things do you find most exciting about your work?
My job as a military pilot took me all over the world on all kinds of missions, in all kinds of weather, into all kinds of political and economic environments - each assignment preparing me for the next. I flew low-level defoliation missions is Vietnam; served as undergraduate pilot training instructor in West Texas, taught young officers the needed to become good leaders and communicators at an Air Force leadership school in Alabama; piloted the Air Force’s largest transport (C-5 Galaxy) worldwide from Delaware; and supervised the operations of the Civil Air Patrol Wing in NJ, to highlight a few. Aside from aviation, the one common thread throughout my career, was the opportunity to "teach" or be an instructor in every one of my Air Force jobs. A though I am retired from the Air Force, I am not retired from teaching I now have the opportunity to share my experiences and teach annually, over 225 young women and men who are enrolled in the high school Air Force Junior ROTC Program at Washington Township High School, Sewell, NJ. I guess in the end, I have been extremely fortunate teaching was my goal as high school student, and I now have become a teacher of high school students.
Who inspired you to pursue your current career?
I wish I could say that I planned every step of my career, but I cannot. I think the real key to a successful career is doing every job to the best of your ability and seeking out those job opportunities that maximize your God given talents and learned skills. Aviation was the doorway for my career. In my youth it provided- and still does today- so many opportunities. It is just a matter of finding the opportunities that fit your talents . . . and your dreams, just like I did.
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