This is an I-Heart podcast.

This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories, the show where America is the star and the American people.

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On the morning of September 11, 2001, Peter Braxton was the first military pilot in the air over the burning twin towers in lower Manhattan.

It was his first day on the job.

Not long after he did multiple tours of flight combat in the Middle East

and then retired from the Air Force.

Here's Peter with the story about the phone call he received shortly after his retirement.

You know, I was a distinguished graduate and why didn't you fly F-15s or F-22s or F-16s? And you're going to remember I want to be a doctor, A, B, this is before the war.

C, I was homesick, I wanted to go home.

I promise you if the closest Air Force base to where I grew up was a fighter base, I would have picked a fighter. I wanted to go home. And I was happy with my choice until one day I was listening to this Israeli F-16 fighter pilot. And he said, well, why did i fly a fighter and he said because it was personal

we were being attacked in my neighborhood and my sister was there and you can fly an f-16 across

israel and 22 seconds you know i mean that's how small the country is kind of width-wise and

you know for him it was-wise. And, you know, for him, it was personal.

And I remember thinking, you know what?

If this was a day after 9, if this, yeah, it's personal, right?

I'm from New York.

And so an interesting story that I've told is after I got out of the Air Force,

and I was fully out, I was in business school,

I got a call from the Pentagon, and the voice on the phone said,

hey, this is Peter Braxton, yes it is, do you still have your uniform? Yes, I have my uniform.

It's been a couple months. Does it still fit? You know, I'm not sitting on the couch eating Cheetos.

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