Chief's path to success fraught with difficulty

  • Published
  • By David Bedard
  • JBER Public Affairs
JOINT BASE ELMENDORF-RICHARDSON, Alaska --  If Chief Master Sgt. JJ Little's life was a poem, its meter would be flush with success - while its punctuation would be equally rife with failure.

Little, the 3rd Wing command chief master sergeant, said if he has learned anything from his career, it is success comes to those who aren't afraid to fail.

"I think we do ourselves a disservice because we seek perfection so much, that we give no latitude for failure," the Lodi, California, native explained. "I am blessed because I've had leaders who allowed me to fail, who then turned around and showed me how to fix it without kicking me in the shins."

Little said he decided to pay his leadership's generosity forward in his effort to invest in a younger generation of successor Airmen.

"You can be an encouragement," Little said of leaders. "You can use some of those experiences, like the successes and failures I have had. It's good to know that not everyone is going to excel at everything they do."

For Little, failure was a big part of his life early on. Equally  significant was Little's determination to find success despite often mounting challenges.

High school dropout
It seemed like a teenaged Little was headed nowhere fast. In high school, he developed a reputation as a fist fighter who got more than he gave. At the age of 16, the future Air Force leader dropped out and took a job busing tables.

Little said he knew he needed direction. When he turned 17, he told his less-than-thrilled mother he was going to enlist.

His first visit was to the Marine Corps recruiter. They immediately rejected Little on account of not having a high school diploma.

Initially, the Army recruiters told Little they weren't interested in him either. However, they allowed him to take the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery, a test he scored very highly on. The Army recruiters were suddenly interested in the determined recruit.

The Army enlisted Little as a cannon crew member with airborne option. He went to the Fresno Military Entrance Processing Station three hours from his home, asking his mother to make the trip to sign paperwork for the minor to enter Army service - a choice that wouldn't be without its challenges.

"I was looking for discipline," Little recalled. "I was looking for guidance. My first three years - certainly the first two - were not very successful."

The challenges stemmed from an initial inability to fully adjust to military ideals during his first assignment at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

He still had a fighting spirit, but instead of fighting with his fists, he fought with a set of values that sorely needed adjustment.

"It took me a long time to move from my own moral standard - about how things should or should not be done - to move to a standard of truth that was more in line with what the military had," Little said. "Once I figured out I was measured against their standard, and not my own, I was very successful because I would just figure out what the standard was. It wasn't hard."
A man who would help Little adjust to the Army lifestyle was his first sergeant, a hard-boiled Vietnam veteran who called the skinny Californian "chicken" and "yardbird."

Little said he quickly got the impression the noncommissioned officer hated him. His suspicions were seemingly verified when the first sergeant summoned Little to his office, calling him "dumber than a bag of wet hammers."

The admonition stemmed from the first sergeant's discovery Little wasn't a high school graduate.

He told the young Soldier he had two options: Little could report - in uniform - to an area high school every Monday morning, or he could visit the Fort Bragg education office to earn his GED.

Little chose the latter, earning the education that had eluded him until a leader challenged him to be better.

"As a young man, I thought the guy hated me," Little said of the first sergeant. "But if the guy hated me, would he have ever called me in the office and set me straight on the path toward education?"

Overcoming fear
Few people have jumped out of a perfectly good airplane as many times at Little has in his military career. Little said he lost count of how many jumps he has logged. According to his official biography, Little has more than 3,000 jumps between his Army and Air Force careers.

But on his first jump at Fort Bragg, Little endured a hard landing that almost changed the course of his story. Suffering a concussion and bruised ribs, and enduring an extended hospital stay, Little swore off jumping for good.

Time and a change of heart, however, would prevail on him to get in the harness again. He would have to lean on his new-found set of Army values to overcome his emotions.

"One of the lessons I learned was you have to have fear in order to have courage," Little explained.

"It took me about a year and a half to get the courage to overcome that fear to start jumping again. But once I did, it was like an obsession for me."

A camel and a lesson
Desert Storm. 1991. Two CH-47 Chinook helicopters flew just above ground level in an effort to evade Iraqi air defenses, 155-mm howitzers dangling beneath the flying machines.

Upon touchdown behind enemy lines, the Chinooks disgorged a score of U.S. artillerymen. Quickly, the Soldiers swarmed the 15,000-plus-pound cannons to promptly get them into action.

Once Little's gunner placed the correct firing data into the sight and traversed and elevated the gun properly, Little peered into the optics to check the gunner's work.

"Fire!" Little yelled. The gunner pulled the trigger mechanism, cueing a concussive boom from the gun.

A 100-pound projectile ripped through the desert air before a rocket motor kicked in, increasing its range from 14 to 18 miles.

Knowing the rounds would find their mark deep in Iraq, Little's crew quickly prepared their howitzer for extraction. The CH-47s returned, rigged the howitzers, and picked up the crews for their expeditious trip back to Saudi soil.

As impressive as the howitzer raids were, Little said he learned more about leadership from the mundane details of the combat deployment.

When leadership identified Little as the youngest sergeant in the unit, they assigned him as the field sanitation NCO.

His first mission: remove a dead camel from an artillery firing point.

Upon consulting the appropriate field manual, Little discovered animals were to be disposed of by burning. It seemed easy enough, he said. His detail simply needed to move the camel to the firing point burn pit. Little issued orders and left.

An hour later, the young NCO returned only to find the detail standing around looking at the camel. Infuriated, Little asked the crew why they hadn't carried out their charge. An older specialist, holding an idle shovel, said it wasn't a small thing to move a camel weighing more than half a ton.

Little scolded the detail, seized the shovel from the Soldier's hands, and plunged it into the ribcage of the animal. The furious sergeant jumped on the shovel - and the animal burst open, much to the disgust of onlookers.

The odious episode made for an important lesson.

"That's when I learned don't ever ask your guys to do something that you're not willing to do," Little said. "It was like Leadership 101 for me."

Knees to the breeze
After the war, the 82nd Airborne Division was looking for jumpmasters to volunteer for duty with the Advanced Airborne School. No one was volunteering.
Seeing an opportunity, Little threw his hat in the ring.

Selecting officials at first showed reluctance at his request due to his youth and inexperience. Little pushed back with persistence and mettle, and the officials relented.
During his tenure at the AAS, Little volunteered with the 82nd Airborne Division's All-American Free Fall Parachute Demonstration Team. Later, Little successfully tried out for the United States Army Parachute Team "Golden Knights."

"What I learned from the Army Parachute Team was how to be a representative of the service - how to act in a professional manner in the public eye," Little said. "I learned to talk to a diverse group of people - from mayors to actors to a 5-year-old licking ice cream who's trying to pack your parachute for you."

Little said he struggled his first year on the team, signifying a theme that was turning into a life pattern.

"Almost everything I did - my first year - I was horrible at," he said. "It took me a while to get good at anything."

The chief said the key to overcoming failure is a persistent resolve.

"It's a can-do attitude," Little elaborated. "It's 'I'm not going to let this beat me. I'm going to continue to press forward.' It's looking at challenges as opportunities."
While on the road, Little met his wife at the Chicago Air and Water Show.

Gone 280 days a year with the Golden Knights, Little said he thought family life and his assignment were incompatible. With his enlistment up, the Army staff sergeant hung up his jump boots.

Aim high or stay home
After leaving the Army, Little studied forestry at North Carolina State University, biting off more than he could chew with 22 semester credit hours.

He quit college, then got a job scheduling flight crews for a major airline.

"I didn't like the job at all," Little said. "It was six days a week, 12 hour days ... It was a great organization, but it just wasn't the same as being in the military."

Little said his wife could see civilian life wasn't working out for him. She encouraged him to join back up.

The Army recruiter said they would take the former E-6 back, but he would have to lose two pay grades and come in as a specialist.

"I said I didn't care," Little recalled. "Just send me back to Bragg."

At the last minute, the recruiters said they wanted him to be an active duty in-service recruiter for the Irving, Texas station. He didn't want to do that, and the Army recruiters cut him loose.

The Air Force recruiter had other designs for Little. He told the former Soldier the Air Force had need of his skill set, showing him a recruiting video for combat control.

Reporting to Lackland Air Force Base (now Joint Base San Antonio), Texas, for training, Little ran into some problems when he reported to the base clothing and sales store with his uniform allowance.

"I'm this very Army-centric guy," the chief said. "They give me $1,500, they tell me to buy my uniforms, and I don't have a freaking clue about Air Force uniforms at all."

Little filled a shopping cart with the uniform items he thought he should have, including technical sergeant stripes that were the wrong size. Fortunately for the newly minted Airman, the store clerk would set him straight.

"She said 'You're all messed up. Let me get you squared away,'" he said. "She put all the stuff back, walked me around, and helped me out."
Again, Little would struggle in his new environment.

Little reported to Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Arizona, where he would serve as an air traffic controller.

Eventually, the senior controller pulled him aside for what amounted to a firing.

"He said 'You're a great NCO. You're a great leader. We really like having you. But you're a little too intense. Have you ever thought about TACP?' That's how I got into TACP, and it was a great fit."

As a tactical air control party specialist, it was Little's job to call in close air support for Army and Marine Corps units. His first assignment as a TACP: Fort Bragg, with the 14th Air Support Operations Squadron. Little had come full circle.

Danger close
A Navy F-18 Hornet rolled off the deck of an aircraft carrier bouncing in the Mediterranean Sea and headed for Iraq's Nineveh Province.

As a fast mover, the pilot would count on a TACP Airman on the ground to help him support Soldiers of Fort Wainwright's 172nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team. That Airman was Little.
It was his second combat deployment as an Airman following a tour in Afghanistan.

As much as Little struggled as an air traffic controller, he seemed to fit right in with Soldiers and Marines who needed him at the worst of times.

"Generally, people aren't looking for close air support until things are pretty bad," he said. "And then they really need it."

Of the 14 months Little was assigned to Eielson Air Force Base - a stone's throw from Fort Wainwright - he was deployed to Iraq for 10. His son was sick and needed treatment at a children's hospital in Denver, cutting his Alaska assignment short.

At his new assignment at Fort Carson, Colorado, Little was presented with a unique opportunity - attending the Marine Corps Staff NCO Academy Advanced Course.

Once again, Little was called to represent his service; this time he was representing the Air Force to the few and proud.

The first morning, he showed up wearing the Marine physical training uniform - minus the MARINES script on his chest. He could hear Marines murmuring about the Airman who would be joining them. The temporarily anonymous Little had one goal: beat everyone in fitness.

"I went there with the intention of kicking everyone's tail in PT," Little said. "I had trained very hard at 14,000 feet atop a mountain just to come there and do well on their PT standards."
Little accomplished his goal, earning the course's Gung Ho award for his PT performance.

"I trained hard for that darn thing," Little said, gazing at the Ka-Bar knife at the center of the award sitting in his office. "Of course, all the air was sucked out of the room when they announced who the winner was."

Back to Alaska
After a tour in Hawaii, Little reported to Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson where he would serve as the commandant of the Elmendorf Professional Military Education Center.
Gleaning from his experience with Marine Corps PME, Little worked with base leadership and his counterpart at the U.S. Army Alaska NCO Academy to establish an exchange between the schools.

Airmen could attend the Army's Warrior Leader Course, and Soldiers could attend the Air Force's Airman Leadership School.

Little said he wished he had done an inter-service professional exchange earlier in his career. He said such exchanges are important because the parochial way of doing business is outdated "We don't fight like that anymore," Little explained. "And because we don't, we need to get our junior NCOs to start working together and understanding the differences - cross-cultural competencies - between the services."

After his time at the Elmendorf PMEC, Little moved across the base to the 3rd Wing headquarters.

Now, he spends a lot of his time visiting with Airmen working on the flightline, in hangars and in shops.

He said it is important for all Airmen to understand their vital place in the wing's efforts.

"We confuse our importance to the fight based on our proximity to the fight, and we should never do that as Airmen," Little said. "That chain has to happen for every career field in our Air Force.

"There is a logistics and a support chain that is huge," he continued. "It must have long legs. None of the things we can do when we're delivering airpower on the battlefields of yesterday, today and tomorrow can happen without everyone firing on all cylinders and doing their best at every level."

By any account, being the command chief master sergeant of a composite wing signifies a successful career. Little would tell anyone he didn't get to where he is without challenges, without failures. But he didn't let those failures turn into patterns that would derail his military service.

When he ran into problems enlisting at the recruiting office, Little found another way to secure the discipline and direction he was looking for. When he suffered a bone-crushing landing during his cherry jump, the Soldier found a way to surmount his fears and make parachuting a passion for life. When he struggled in a career field that wasn't a good fit for him, the Airman found the best way to serve the Air Force and the nation as a TACP.

Little's life may have been punctuated by failure, but through extensive investments from those around him, hard work, and perseverance, the prose of his life's story is one of success.