Early Influences
The Apollo missions of the sixties and seventies probably played a large role in exciting Peter’s dream of aviation and space exploration. None of Peter Jalajas’ ancestors were pilots or connected to aviation in any way. In fact, Peter’s father emigrated to the United States in 1949 as a WWII refugee freed from a Displaced Persons Camp (and fatherless), while his mother came over from Europe (also fatherless) and worked as an au pair. Both parents were financially destitute, and if any privilege were attributed to the young Peter, it would be his innate creativity and initiative.
But it was Peter’s grandmother who brought him to the toy store on every visit so that he could pick out an aircraft model to build in her meager apartment (443 Springfield Ave, Summit, NJ, third floor). The earliest one that sticks in Peter’s mind is the one portrayed here, the Revell F-4J Navy version of the Phantom which he built on her kitchen table. It was somewhere between the age of four and eight that Peter engaged in these plastic engineering works. Perhaps it was those foldable wingtips or even the fancy tail art that inspired him into the thrill of Navy flying?
Around the same time in his childhood, living on a corner at Runnymede Road in West Caldwell, New Jersey, Peter remembers late afternoons (on Fridays after work?) where parents congregated outside in conversation to start the weekend off while the kids played in the street before them. Sure there was whiffle ball and playing catch with the football, but what also sticks in Peter’s memories are the times spent building and flying paper airplanes at these neighborhood gatherings. One has to wonder if any kids today could be drawn to such a simple pleasure after being conditioned to the allure of Play Station and XBox video games?
Elementary School/ High School / College
Looking back at Peter’s public education, he points to the fact that his family moved around many times, causing him to change school districts five times: He began in West Caldwell, NJ, from Kindergarten through grade 3; Colts Neck, NJ, from grade 4 – 7; Walnut Creek, CA for grades 8 and half of 9; Summit, NJ for second half of grade 9; Holmdel High School from grade 11 through graduation. What’s remarkable is that Peter did not come from a military family where this would be very common. But it does impress upon him the difficulties that military families face in delivering a stable social environment and friendship base for their growing children. Fortunately for Peter, friends were not hard to find when sharing the enjoyable experiences of fishing. With the popularization of mopeds in 1978 -1980, Peter and some close buddies built memorable times catching flounder and blue fish with friends off the beaches of Sandy Hook or the the bridge at Atlantic Highlands, or cat fish from the pond at Holmdel Park.
When one looks at Peter’s senior year report card, it certainly doesn’t look bad. He had two Advanced Placement courses, Physics and Calculus that helped nudge up his GPA. Now compare this to a “competitive” college candidate today, and Peter probably wouldn’t have made the cut against the thousands of students bringing in grade point averages well above 4.3 or one with a well-backed “holistic” profile! Peter embraced his elective classes, many which are unavailable to students today! His well-rounded collection included: wood shop, metal shop, small engines, auto shop, print shop, guitar, architecture, and drafting (where his final project was drafting a beautiful pencil drawing of an F-16 Falcon, AKA the “Viper”). At age 15, on his own initiative, he asked his parents if he could take flying lessons. He started slowly with a lesson in a Cessna 152 and then enrolled in the Civil Air Patrol. He aced his first written test there, and he was excited about the opportunities that this military-oriented flying “club” offered. But then his family moved. Peter managed to find an aviation ground school, and was the only “kid” in his class learning the slide rule magic of the wiz wheel (a circular slide rule that pilots used before the advent of calculators, smart phones and tablets).
By the time that Peter Jalajas was searching for colleges, flight testing of the space shuttle was in full gear. Peter scoured the thick books that covered all the university statistics and majors, and he also had fine tuned his passion into an ambition. He wanted to become an astronaut. And so, in evaluating all the options out there, he independently decided that aeronautical engineering wasn’t good enough. He was determined to get into a school that offered aerospace engineering as a degree, since space was his new focus. He did apply to two schools: Purdue and Georgia Tech. Fortunately, Georgia Tech had educated the first two shuttle astronauts, John Young and Dick Truly, and their track record as Navy Test Pilots would prove to be a career path worth pursuing. Purdue, possibly a more competitive university, rejected Peter’s application. And with the inspiration of Young and Truly, Peter became a Yellow Jacket!
Post University
Peter attended the New Jersey Institute of Technology in Hoboken, NJ, for a Master’s level mathematics course while awaiting word on acceptance into an elite Naval Aviation program: Aviation Officer Candidate School (AOCS). If your old like Peter, then you may have seen the movie starring Richard Gere as an officer candidate in “An Officer and a Gentleman”. This is what Peter had set his eyes on. In the meantime, he tried to physically train for challenges that would await him if selected. He joined a gym for the first time. Having a disdain for long distance running due to chiildhood asthma, he began running miles at a time. His mother also helped him gain employment at the Hilton Hotel East Brunswick. There he worked in the restaurant, meeting some of the earliest FedEx pilots who layed over there. He happily refilled their coffee every morning, noticing how important this hot caffinated beverage meant to starting their day. Peter woudn’t need that coffee quite yet, as his flying career hadn’t begun. But then one day the message came. From that Hilton lobby he rushed to a pay phone to call back the local recruiting office. He was accepted with a pilot slot (contingent on passing all eye exams and medical). The dream was becoming reality!
