Always ready to protect the United States, Owen and his compatriots in the Navy flew jets with live missiles and guns because they never knew with each flight whether the pilots of the U.S.S.R. In retrospect, he sees it clearly as a “cat and mouse game,” but it is never a game while dealing with an unpredictable adversary. At that time, he was an F-14 pilot, the Cold War was at its peak and his assignment was to intercept aircraft and defend the carrier.

With a few more years of training under his wings, he was deployed in the Western Pacific on the USS Enterprise in 1978. After a model upbringing by his Baptist preacher father and schoolteacher mother, he graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 1975. Kip Owen’s trajectory through his military career took him to heights that few Americans will ever have the privilege of experiencing. It was a stride destined for a very long and enormously successful life of service to others.ĭr. Back in 1971, when he was sworn in to the US Navy while at the United State Naval Academy, he walked into an extraordinary place reserved only for those courageous enough to serve and protect the citizens of the United States.

He has finally lapped up enough years in which he has been out of the military as the years he served in the military.

Kip trajectory