SANTA FE, N.M. — Wayne Sowell said he didn't want to get emotional, so maybe it was just the wind blowing across the landing area that led him to brush away that "something in my eye" as he bid goodbye to his military colleagues.
Sowell, a chief warrant officer five, officially retired Dec. 6 after his last commencement flight, ending 35 years in the New Mexico National Guard and nearly 40 years in the military. A Guard spokesman said the Albuquerque native is the last Vietnam-era pilot to retire.
About 60 guardsmen lined up to shake Sowell's hand after he landed a UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter on a pad at the National Guard Onate Training Complex south of Santa Fe.
Also present to share the moment were his wife, Linda Borrego, her father, veteran Placido Borrego, who served in World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War and several other relatives.
"It's a real happy-sad moment," Linda Borrego said after Sowell landed. "He's just a few hours short of 10,000 hours' flight time. Now he can start with the 'Honey do's' — 'Honey, do this, honey do that.'"
Sowell, who turns 60 this month, is taking mandatory retirement. His buddies were clearly ribbing him about that — someone stuck a handicapped-parking sticker on his cockpit window, and someone else put pins in his seat cushion on the Black Hawk.
Sowell said he received his private pilot's license while he was a student at Sandia High School in the late 1960s.
His father served in both World War II and the Korean War, and Sowell himself enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1971. After basic training at Fort Polk, La., he attended flight school at Fort Wolters, Texas, and Fort Rucker, Ala.
"You develop lifelong friendships with the guys in flight school," Sowell said. "All of them went to Vietnam. A lot of them didn't come back."
Sowell was assigned to an assault-helicopter company and deployed to Vietnam in the spring of 1972. He served a year there and was awarded a Bronze Star and the Air Medal with a V for valor and 12 oak-leaf clusters.
In 1975, he joined the National Guard and helped start the state's first aviation unit, the 717th Medical Evacuation Company. He has also flown rescue missions, aircraft recovery missions and training flights.
Col. Tim Paul, Sowell's commanding officer, still remembers his first training flight under Sowell's tutelage in the summer of 1988. "It took me an hour to get off the ground," Paul said. "He kept failing the engines on me."
Paul said if the Guard's aviation program is considered a success, "It's because of Chief Sowell and the high standards he maintains."
Sowell said he wasn't expecting any pomp, circumstance or publicity on his last day.
"This is a thrill I've enjoyed for 40 years," he said. "To think the government paid me to do this. I'd have done it for free."
He started to recall how he felt poorly treated by the public back in the early 1970s, when he was a returning Vietnam veteran, before turning his reflection into an observation on how things have changed for the better.
"Today, the public has a higher appreciation for what we are doing," he said.
His wife said he has more years in the military than he does with her. "His life will always be the military," she said. "I think he's going to miss it."