33 CALF News • April | May 2022 • www.calfnews.net Continued on page 39 JOHNSON CONCRETE LIVESTOCK WATERERS THE BEST NAME IN CATTLE WATERERS www.JohnsonConcreteProducts.com Trusted by Livestock Owners Everywhere! JOHNSON CONCRETE LIVESTOCK WATERERS 109 East B Street Hastings, Neb. 68901 phone: (402) 463-1359 toll free: (800) 752-1670 Built with features to last, Johnson Waterers withstand punishing weather and prove to be dependable year after year. TOUGH, DEPENDABLE CONSTRUCTION See us for all your water trough needs. We are #1 in water trough parts and services. Designed for the most punishing environments, our livestock waterers stand the test of time and deliver performance unequaled in the ndustry. By Larry Stalcup, Contributing Editor One of the Heartland’s iconic ranches kept Gentner Drummond in the saddle during his youth. However, with a father and grandfather deeply devoted to the Boy Scouts, being a Cub and eventually an Eagle Scout helped him skip a chore or two and obtain values that have guided him as a rancher, Air Force pilot, businessman, lawyer and philanthropist. Drummond grew up on the famed Drummond Ranch near Pawhuska, Okla., at Hominy. As guest speaker at a recent Boy Scouts fundraiser in Amarillo, Texas, Drummond stressed the value of scouting in rural America. “Scouting is so valuable to our communities. Scouting teaches integrity, character, selfreliance and assurance, and discipline to do the right thing,” he said. The Drummonds still manage thousands of cattle across the southern end of the Tall Grass Prairie. It’s located on what’s termed “The Osage,” where the Osage tribe did much trading with settlers. Like the late 1880s founder Frederick Drummond, family members have nearly all been assigned ranch duties. “But scouting was one escape from chores,” Drummond said. “Our father knew scouting provided opportunities to develop skills we may not otherwise obtain.” Drummond later earned an ag economics degree from Oklahoma State University. He was also in the Air Force ROTC and attended flight training after graduation. Flight students featured many with engineering degrees. “I was in ag economics and had no background in flying, designing airplanes or radar,” he said. But he advanced with high test marks. Part of the flight suits reminded him of chaps for riding horseback. “I felt natural in that outfit,” he said. “I had learned that the horse always talks to you, and a skilled horseman communicates back with your legs. You become one. Not knowing much about aviation, I let the jet talk to me and I talked back. That’s how I flew. It became natural.” After training, he was assigned to a squadron in Virginia. He flew F-15s. That was in July 1990. In August, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, and Drummond’s squadron was the first U.S. military group to respond in what became operation Desert Shield. “I wound up as the lead jet in a squadron of 24,” he said. “I landed as the first American in [the war] theater. We got into combat readiness and began patrolling and defending the skies over Saudi Arabia.” After the Iraq war began in January, Drummond had the lead jet in an air support group. When its first mission was completed, Drummond had orders to shoot down an enemy plane. But the speed and flight pattern of the plane didn’t match that of an enemy combatant. His gut led him to disobey the order to kill three times. “I didn’t think it was a bad guy. I ran the intercept and it was a friend, a Saudi pilot,” he said. “I returned to our side of the base and he returned to the other side. Law enforcement was there and I got arrested for disobeying orders. But the word from the Saudi side got back to my side. The order came that ‘let’s give him the Distinguished Flying Cross’ – because he did not kill the Saudi prince. “This illustrates how the military takes what we have in scouting and develops it,” he said. Gentner Drummond explains the importance of the Boy Scouts organization in rural areas. Rural Areas Need Boy Scouts and Vice Versa
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