Andrew Odell: fighter pilot

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Andrew Odell: fighter pilot

Tucked in the pages of his high school senior yearbook, four words disclose Andrew Odell’s long-time desire to fly planes.

“Dream job: fighter pilot.”

The 2011 Hillsdale alumnus is now enrolled in naval flight school. But the dream he is living today laid dormant for years beneath plans to attend law school.

“It had been in the back of my head for a while, I just didn’t think I was going to do it,” Odell recalled later.

On May 4, 2012, Odell graduated from Officer Candidate School and was commissioned as an officer in the Navy. Assistant to the President Mike Harner came for the pinning ceremony to formally usher him into the service.

After six weeks of preliminary training in Pensacola, Fla. – basically civilian flight school and outdoor survival training – Odell moved half an hour north to Milton, where he started “flight school for real.”

He now flies the T-6, a training aircraft. Odell calls it  “a really sporty plane that has a lot of power.” He said it was hard to fly at first, but he has gotten more accustomed to the speed.

On the average day, he gets debriefed by the instructor on the mission given the night before, flies, then reviews the flight with the instructor.

“Basically  my day consists of flying, which is awesome,” he said.

Despite what he wrote in his high school yearbook, his path to flight school was far from a certain one.

As an undergraduate at Hillsdale, he joined the honors program and majored in history. During the summers, he worked at a law firm near home in Lancaster, Penn. Odell enjoyed working at the law firm, and thought he was headed for a career in law.

“I was good at it,” he said. “That’s pretty much what I saw myself doing.”

In the fall of 2010, the same semester he took the LSAT, he spoke with a Navy recruiter on campus. It was then he started to seriously consider actually going to flight school.

Before jumping into a 10-year commitment to the Navy, he approached his boss in the President’s office, Harner, for life advice.

Harner had been a Naval officer and pilot for 20 years before retiring and coming to work for College President Larry Arnn. Harner said he advised Odell to go for it.

“I loved my service. I would recommend it to anyone,” he said. “I’m proud that Andrew went into it.”

He said that despite the difficulties of being in a strict setting, Andrew will likely excel.

“He’s a very industrious, hard-working young man,” he said.

Odell also consulted Associate Dean of Men Jeffery Rogers. Rogers spent 26 years in the Navy as a cytologist and medical officer. He is also a Christian, and Odell asked him how he lived out his faith in the military.

“I told him it was a great opportunity, and that God can use him,” Rogers said. “God can use anybody in any vocation.”

Odell remembers Rogers’ advice to live an exemplary life, because that is the thing people notice. He indicated that the advice has proved valuable.

“My faith is the most important thing to me in my life,” Odell said. “It’s certainly been difficult living that out in the military, in part because very few of the friends I’m going through flight school with are Christians.”

In May 2011, Odell graduated magna cum laude and headed home to work at the law firm over the summer. He submitted his completed application in March and waited for the reply.

And he waited.

“It was a little bit of an anxious summer,” Odell said.

He did not hear back until November, when he got a phone call alerting him to his acceptance into Naval flight school. He had until February of 2012 to get ready for OCS in Newport, R. I.

Odell’s father, Andrew Odell Sr., said he is glad that his son is living out the love he has for the United States.

“I’d rather have someone who understands what our country was founded on and really committed to those principles to not only protect us but also be an ambassador to others around the globe,” he said.

Odell’s younger sister, Hillsdale College senior Elizabeth Anne Odell, said that he joined the Navy for the right reasons.

“He’s an honest and hardworking man, and he’ll use his military service to the greater good and not just to advance his career,” she said.

His mother, Abby Odell, also said that he had joined the Navy for the right reasons.

“I have confidence that he is doing what God wants him to, and I am very proud of him.”

The night before he left for OCS, Elizabeth Anne brought out the old high school yearbook and pointed out where he had said he wanted to be a fighter pilot.

Nobody remembered him saying that.

Odell attended OCS, boot camp for officers, in the middle of winter.

“I was miserable for 12 weeks,” Odell said. “The Naval OCS is run by Marine Corps drill instructors. I don’t know that there’s a nice Marine Corps drill instructor.”

Though he is living his dream, the job comes with challenges. If someone flies poorly or does know his stuff, the Navy can just send him home.

“It’s fairly easy to get a stripe against you,” he said. “One or two stripes and you’re out of the program.”

Hillsdale prepared him well, he said. For one, it gave him the study habits he has needed to get through the rigors of the classroom part of the training. More importantly, he said Hillsdale gave him a “really well-informed sense of patriotism.”