“You were Goose.”
Yep, that was me, the picture of professionalism last week, calling a county commissioner a goose while sitting in his office at the Gato Building. He didn’t throw me out or quietly ask his assistant Sue Burke to call the nice behavioral health folks at dePoo Hospital to come get me.
It was Jim Scholl, after all. And before he became a county commissioner in 2022, he did two five-year stints as the Key West city manager. Before that, he’d been Capt. Jim Scholl, commander of Naval Air Station Key West from 2003 to 2006. And before THAT, he’d been a Navy fighter pilot. (“That’s right, a naval aviator.”)
So, yeah, he got the Goose thing — and every other “Top Gun” movie reference that tends to fall from my mouth in any conversation I have with a fighter pilot.
“Yeah, I was Goose — only I’m still here,” Scholl replied wryly, alluding to the movie fate of Lt. Nick “Goose” Bradshaw, who served as the radar intercept officer (RIO) to Lt. Pete “Maverick” Mitchell in the 1986 blockbuster that I watched incessantly on VHS in middle school.
“I absolutely wanted to be a pilot, but the vision in my left eye was 20/25, so I ended up being a RIO,” Scholl said. “But I used to say that important people always have a chauffeur, so my pilot was my chauffeur.”
As RIO, Scholl was responsible for most aspects of an air combat mission: operating the complex radar system that can track 24 targets miles away, managing navigation systems, tracking enemy targets, aiming and firing weapons, directing the pilot on speed and steering, monitoring fuel levels and more.
Scholl retired from the Navy 20 years ago, in 2006. He’d joined in 1979 and was commissioned as an officer at his college graduation from Miami University in Ohio, having completed the Navy Reserve Officer Training Corps.
By December 1980, he was at Naval Air Station Oceana in Virginia Beach — and learning the F-14 Tomcat, whose retired pilots and RIOs talk wistfully about the aircraft the way other men pine for the sports car or motorcycle they drove before they had kids.
Scholl’s no different. His iPad is filled with photos of the F-14 Tomcat, taking off from carriers, flying at sunset and parked on a flight deck. His office at the Gato Building contains a wooden sculpture of the plane and plenty of military memorabilia.
“The only plane I flew operationally was the F-14 Tomcat,” he said. “It’s the ultimate crew airplane, as a two-seater,” he said. “Because you have to work together.”
Scholl would later fly in the Tomcat in Desert Storm against Iraqi forces in 1991.
“I spent a total of five years at sea aboard a carrier,” he said. “But my big claim to fame is that I graduated from Top Gun three years before the movie came out.”
The job of NAS Key West commander, from 2003 to 2006, were Scholl’s final orders. He retired from the Navy in 2006 — “it was 20 years ago. I retired from the Navy the same year they retired the F-14 Tomcat,” he said.
This weekend marks the 20th anniversary of the Tomcat’s retirement, and Scholl is back at NAS Oceana for a 20-year reunion of all aviators who flew in them.
“I’m most excited about seeing the boys again,” he said. “We’ve never done one of these reunions before. We’ll all tell sea stories, and those always get better with age. But the truth is, every time I got to climb into the F-14, I felt like a kid with his hand in the cookie jar. I loved it.”
Did you hear that? It sounds like…Kenny Loggins? “Revvin’ up your engine / Listen to her howlin’ roar / Metal under tension / Beggin’ you to touch and go. / Highway to the danger zone.”
