SEQUIM — Bill Huizinga is sitting at a booth in a Port Angeles restaurant, but his heart and spirit are soaring at 550 knots in a U.S. Air Force F-102 fighter jet far above desolate, snow-laden Alaska plains.
It’s 2003, but it may as well be the late 1960s to Huizinga, a 63-year-old Sequim City Council member and Clallam County roads right of way specialist.
Huizinga has just published Failure Was Not an Option, an account of his time as a fighter pilot for the Air Force.
“This isn’t a book about flying; I’m not interested in the technical aspect,” he said.
“But when I was writing it, I had to stop and ask myself, ‘What was I feeling?’
“It was a way to relate what went through my mind while I was flying.”
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The rest of the story appears in the Tuesday Peninsula Daily News.