He’s an Army Ranger, a Black Hawk pilot, a small business owner, a proud veteran and supporter of veterans. He’s brilliant, funny, and ridiculously good looking. He is often imitated, but never duplicated. He is Jonathan E. Marsh… the man, the myth, the legend.
Despite the impressive biceps and perfectly sculpted pecs, there really is not enough of him to go around. And everyone wants a piece. So what does a day in the life of Jonathan Marsh really look like?
On this day, it starts off around 7, when he wakes up without the assistance of an alarm clock. He laces up his tennis shoes and heads out the door for a two-mile jog. Back home, he makes a quick cup of coffee, black, fills his Ranger Nalgene with water, and heads to the gym. Walking out of the gym, his phone rings. It’s his daughter, Montana, calling to tell him how excited she is that he is taking her to Great Wolf Lodge this weekend for her 10th birthday.
At 10 am, Jonathan gets together with the Tier-One CFO and/or his Sales Manager for a business meeting about roofing in Broken Arrow. Despite the fact that these business meetings are frequently conducted on the golf course, there is an impressive amount of productivity and collaboration. Discussion centers around customers and contracts, projected numbers and actual numbers, product comparisons, labor costs, payroll, and philanthropy projects.
Jonathan’s phone only rings every 5 minutes or so. In the golf cart, he replies to multiple messages and comments on the Tier-One FB page and his personal pages. Fortunately, Lori Fulbright of News Channel 4 did a story on all of the fake Facebook profiles currently using his likeness. Now, instead of explaining the scam in detail, he responds to every “Why did you lie to me? I loved you!” message that he receives with a link to the news story. Getting back in his truck, he creates a clever meme in response to a text from a sales guy and sends it to the office group message.
At noon, Jonathan sits down to a lunch meeting with the director and assistant director of Soldier’s Wish, who is working along-side Tier-One on a fundraiser to benefit the VFW.
Back in the office by 1:30, Jonathan’s afternoon is filled with contracts and property insurance, marketing and advertising, a profile picture swap on Facebook, price negotiations with vendors and subcontractors, supply orders, invoices, and more Facebook.
He heads home at 5 to meet his hair gal for an in-home haircut, then gets dressed for flight duty. Head to toe, he is dressed in his flight suit with meticulous attention to detail, collar popped. Most importantly, he is wearing his biggest pathfinder watch and his favorite Aviator Ray Bans. Then it’s off to the flight facility, where, as the Public Affairs Officer, he gives a tour of the hangar to some civilian visitors (aka hot girls from the gym). He takes pictures of the civilians with the aircraft, then takes a moment for a quick “work grind” selfie for Facebook.
At 7 o’clock, Jonathan does flight planning and risk assessment with the Blackhawk pilot. He then heads out to preflight the aircraft. It’s a simple process where the pilots check the main rotor blades, the tail rotor blades, the hydraulics, the engine compartments (there are two engines), check the auxiliary power unit in the back of the nose, connect the batteries, make sure all the tie-downs are stowed away, check the cargo hook is stowed away, and check the general condition of the aircraft. The whole thing takes about 20 minutes. After that, it’s a return to the flight planning room for crew brief where the entire flight crew is briefed on what is going to happen, as well as emergency procedures, any contingencies or altered plans, emergency landings, etc. The brief takes another 20 or 30 minutes. After that, pilots go out to the aircraft and start it up. After doing all the checks, they have the aircraft off the ground in around 20 minutes.
Jonathan has flown many hours in night vision goggles, but tonight a new crew chief is in training and it’s his first time in goggles. Going from a 120° field of view down to 40° is a pretty dramatic adjustment. The pilots job for the evening is basic RL (readiness level) progression for the new crew chief. In the air, they do approaches, brief slope landings and limitations, roll-on landings and rolling take offs, and simulated engine failure. Flight time tonight is 1.9 hours, much of which is spent listening to the new crew chief marvel the wonders of night-vision goggles.
After landing, there are shut down procedures that must be followed per a checklist, then the men chain the aircraft down for weather. The pilots head inside to fill out the logbook. They debrief the flight, do an after-action review where they talk about every aspect of the flight, from the planning phase to take off, radio calls, basically the entire mission… anything that didn’t go right or should have gone differently. They talk about sustains or improvements for each one of those steps, and then sit around and talk about how cool it is to be a pilot. After all of the equipment is put away, everyone is dismissed.
Post flight duty, Jonathan typically heads to his best friend’s house where he unwinds with a single short Jack and Coke and deep discussions on the porch swing about politics, science, religion, relationships and parenting.