OmahaNebraska.com Interview with Major Jacob Hall
Please tell me a little bit about how you came to be here today and why you chose to be Flight Surgeon for the Thunderbirds.
Sure. So I started my Air Force career 20 years ago as a young airman, actually assigned right here at Offutt Air Force Base for my first duty station working in Intelligence. I did that for a few years, used the tuition assistance in the GI Bill to go to college, and my dream was to go to medical school, and so I applied through an Air Force program to go to medical school. I was fortunate enough to get accepted into that. I attended medical school for four years and then served as a flight surgeon in San Antonio, TX, for about 3 years, did my residency training in dermatology and then had the opportunity to apply for this position with the Thunderbirds to be their flight surgeon. And so I jumped on that opportunity, and I was so lucky to get selected. I’ve been with the team now for about a year and I’m just having a wonderful time taking care of all these folks.
I understand you had more or still do have more flight time than everyone else.
Yes, that’s true. I do have more combat flying hours than anybody else on the team, and that’s all from right here at Offutt. The years I was flying here with the RC135s doing deployments during Operation Enduring Freedom.
Thank you very much for your service. Any advice to people wanting to start down your path?
Yeah, absolutely. You know, there’s so many opportunities in the Air Force that you just have to find what you want to do and pursue that. And that’s always my recommendation to young people who are considering the Air Force as a career is to go talk to a recruiter, look at all the different jobs that are available. There’s so many different things you can do, but then just, you know, once you get on the path you want to be on is make a plan for where you want to be and always have that plan for the next year, five years, ten years, but then always be moving towards your goals.
Thank you very much.
It was nice talking with you.
