Johnny "John" Ferris Wilcox

On August 26, 1967, John married Mary Hale, and the two shared 48 wonderful years together. John proudly served his country in the United States Air Force and retired in 1989 after 22 years of service. John had many talents, one of which was a gourd artist. He created unique and beautiful gourds which were given away or sold upon completion. John also enjoyed being a electronics specialist, science teacher at the Omniplex, and volunteering at the zoo, hospital and nature center.

John was preceded in death by his parents; and one grandson, David Wilcox. Survivors include his loving wife, Mary; children, Jeff Wilcox (Colleen), Julie Jakowski; grandchildren, Tim Hilton, Michaela and Jasper Smith, Matthew and Luke Wilcox, Lori Johnson and Quenton Jakowski; sisters, Patsy Harp (Ronald), Sherry Kovach (George), Cathy Foley; and his hound dog, Odie.

A memorial service will be held at 2:00 p.m. Friday, January 8, 2016 at the Bill Eisenhour Southeast Chapel.

John took the time to write down some of the memories from his childhood on and we wanted to share this with you:

I attended Stubbs Elementary my favorite teacher in 6th grade Mrs. McGowan. My first pet was Frisky, but only for 17 years. I attended Smiley Wilson Jr. High and my favorite teacher Mr. Barnes 8th grade English. Audio/visual Club at that time involved 8mm projector and reel to reel tape recorder. I attended Monterey high School and my favorite class was speed math and drafting.

I lived next to Nanny & Pa on 5th street in a house on the back lot. Nanny would ring chicken's neck's, wear bonnet's and place quilts on the big bed, and I remember Pa's wooden tool box in an old dilapidated wooden garage. There was a wishing well located at the library down the street from Mama's house on 18th street. The wooden garage leaned and Sunflowers grew out back. We had a screened in back porch. I once found a toy gun buried in the garden. There was a steel guitar in the bedroom.

Granddad's Kimbals Foods big warehouse, Nanny Hodge's Department Store's creaky floor, crowded merchandise, shoe and hat stretcher's are some of the things I remember. Hodges gave me a yellow metal toy crane one Christmas. I helped build cinder block flat top house on 36th, and I remember that it had a built in laundry chute in the closet. Dad turned an old lantern into a room light. I remember a small house on the back with Mustard plants and I built a cinder block dog house for Frisky.

Across from Stubbs the roof on that house was lifted by a tornado while I was camping with boy scouts. Dad turned a small trailer into a camping trailer with upper and lower beds. I don't know how six of us fit.

First Cumberland Presbyterian Church burned in a fire and was then blow away by a tornado. Tony Maddox had a BMW and the Everly brothers were the top of the charts. Going out on Halloween in Mac Davis' which 1856 Chevy with his brother from church, trash cans for noise and chasing girls into the house on a dare, and the father chased me right back out.

I tried to give myself a haircut once because I was trying to save money for a crystal radio receiver. Mom kind of noticed. I worked with Dad at Buck's Irrigation wiring control panels, and this is probably what got me started in Electronics. I jammed the ignition switch on dad's '57 Ford wagon while trying to listed to the radio while waiting on him to come back from a delivery, he took it pretty well though.

I remember hiding a frog under a rag and scared Billy Lawson and the janitor who ran out the door didn't come back until the next day. I learned to weld, do machine work on lathe, and drive a fork lift. I dropped an irrigation engine from the hoist and had to drive myself to the hospital and still have the scar from the stitches on my left arm. I had a 1954 4 door Ford we tried to paint white but added to much brown and it came out pink. I had a Flathead V* Cushman motor scooter that took corners too fast and slid sideways on gravel. I also had a 1956 4 door Ford Police Interceptor engine 312 V8 and had a 1967 GTO gold hurst dual gate shifter 389 duces. I wrecked dad's 1960 Ford when I made a left turn going to lunch in high school and another kid just had to beat the red light.

United States Air Force was a big chuck of my life. I almost went to Vietnam as a K9 paratrooper but the Air Force recruiter talked me into Electronics Tech School because of my scores on the entrance exams. I really love animals but I'm glad I leaned electronics. I still feel I had a big impact on other people. I went to boot camp at Lackland AFB, San Antonio, TX, which is no longer open. In fact, all the bases closed after I left, except Tinker AFB and I guess that's because I never left. My second base was Chanute AFB, Rantoul, IL. I was waiting on an opening for Flight Simulator school living in a small house trailer with Mary and working in the Venetian blinds shop. No openings in sight so I was transferred to Automatic Flight Control school and that worked out well. Our best friends were, Al and Debbie Kuntz and Connie and Less Hobson. I rode to school on Al's classic Triumph motorcycle. I got to visit a little of Indiana (Turkey Run) and drove by the Indy 500 raceway.

My first real assignment was Perris AFB, Sherman, TX, were I worked on F-102 A&B and was part of the accident investigation team when helicopters crashed. I rode a Yamaha 250 motorcycle to work. I developed the best repair for yaw dampening systems and they kept me in the shop. I had two civilian trainers Floyd Bates & ? One of my best friends, Willie bought an old wooden boat and we fished a lot on Lake Texoma. We never caught much, but really enjoyed the quite coves where we saw baby fawn.

I then got my orders for Uban, Thailand in the middle of the Vietnam War, but they were cancelled because the Air Force would not pay to move me twice in one year. I worked on F-106 at Hamilton Air Force Base in California where I was on the Flight Control team that helped save a pilot’s life when he lost control of Elevators. Major Faulk was the test pilots name and I ran into him again many times. One such time was a small electronics shop at the end of runaway at the North side of San Francisco Bay. Some guys fished at lunch but kept snagging old bombs that had been dropped in the bay.

When I was in Iceland I worked on F-4 D’s and did a lot of wood work in the shop and barracks. I took my 1965 ½ ton Chevy truck camping in outback Iceland. I was walking across lava rocks and then suddenly I sank up to my neck in floating rocks. I didn’t know rocks could float and I was very glad the hole was not deeper and friends could pull me out was not very far away. I was a part of one Outstanding Unit that kept track of Russian Bears during the Cold War. In fact I think every Unit I was in received the Outstanding Unit Award while I was there. Just a coincidence I’m sure. I then was stationed at Carswell Air Force Base in Texas for the B52D’s where we worked on the Astrotracker system. That was in the air 30 feet and we did not have a safety net. We were on the B-52 just like you would ride a bull.

When I was younger I would jump up on the outer wing tank and scramble up the wing to the top. I also worked on the Alert Aircraft while they were loaded with Nuclear weapons. I had Top Secret clearance because we worked around brief cases that had instructions on where to go and what the launch codes were. Back in Iceland I got to ride a Yamaha 400 motorcycle. I was accompanied this time for 2 years and worked on the E-3. Jeff and I were fine but I don’t think Mary enjoyed it much. I moved into Navy housing where we experienced our first Earthquake. I also remember being able to ice skate on a frozen pond. We got to take a trip to Scotland where I took many pictures.

Then we went to Tinker Air Force Base to continue the E-3. Politics finally got to me and I had to retire. Why? I refused to send people out during a tornado to pick up a plastic hose that might damage something. Another time I can remember we had to move an aircraft with rotating wall clouds directly overhead. There were a lot of very bad decisions from upper NCO’s. The last straw was when we got in trouble for using a pager system and going on standby. Then 2 weeks later same NCO’s decided to start using pagers as a good idea! It was a good thing I was the only Electronics Specialist qualified to do engine runs on E-3’s. Talk about something that was cool; when all 4 engines in afterburner and accidentally blew away part of the asphalt. I learned to drive a tow vehicle which is like a Monster Truck with an Olive Drab paint job. I also crossed trained to do almost anything on the E-3’s for changing engines to changing tires. On a flight over Egypt the flight engineer asked me to come up front to look at something. It turns out we had part of our Electronic Counter Measures out and an unidentified plane that was approaching fast. I had to go into the “belly of the beast” to try and fix the problem. It turned out to be a simple fix and the plane was an Egyptian airline on the wrong frequency. At the top of my game I was called on many times to diagnose difficult electronic problems. I once flew into Saudi Arabia in a short 25 hour flight. I was ready to go to the hotel but they met me at customs. They through my bag in the back of the truck and said we need you to fly a mission and fix the plane in-flight. After take-off they put me in the copilot seat so I could feel what the plane was doing. The pilot turned the autopilot off and the nose started increasing circles making the people in the tail sick. I asked to turn the Dumper system off something the pilots had been told never to do. The circles stopped, even though the plane took some time to hold steady. I told them to change the Dampening gyro and they said it was changed twice with the same results. So once more into the “belly of the beast”, I found the gyro was working backwards increasing, not decreasing vibrations. Back on the ground after flying over 36 hours II found all the gyros in stock had been upgraded with a misprint in wiring modification causing the problem on a worldwide basis. I was promoted to Flight Line Supervisor because of my multi talents, once again very rare for an electronics guy to get that job. I took Jeff to land an E-3A one weekend but I am not sure he liked being that close or with that much noise. I was sent as point man on numerous occasions to Canada, Las Vegas, and Florida. Also I flew to England, Germany, and Saudi Arabia. I got to show my Dad an E-3A at Tinker.

My volunteer work started at Fort Worth Zoo working as Docent. My favorites were the Ball Python and the Screech Owl. I learned to talk with large juvenile Bengal Tigers and Gibbons early in the morning. I saw a baby Gazelle born, Wow! I then volunteered for the Education Department at the Omniplex. I taught classes on Cow eye dissection and Burmese Pythons. I was bitten once by a 10 foot Monty and later by a 6 foot Mellony, but it was not their fault. At the Presbyterian Hospital I was the Pink Guy to work with Intensive Care and Critical Care patients. I also met Bob Hope working for the Eye Center he dedicated. I was a volunteer naturalist at Martin Park Nature Center, again with owls and snakes. Then again I was working as a Docent at Oklahoma City Zoo where I got to babysit a 2 month old Rhino. I remembered that my favorite animals were the snowy owl and snow leopards. I handled the Great Horned Owl, snakes, Kestrel, and a 4 foot alligator. I was bitten once by a King snake. I attended training with a young lady named Eileen Castle who later became a good friend and talked me into many crazy things involving snakes, lizards, and wood. Once I received a 5 Who Care Award for over 1000 hours of volunteer service when my son wrote a great letter about me. I was very proud of both Jeff, Julie and, all my grandkids. With Air Force benefits I went back to college at Rose State and the University of Central Oklahoma, and got my next career as a teacher for the Omniplex and then later at the Science Museum of Oklahoma. Working with, you guessed it snakes, but no owls this time. The best job to date was driving the Science Matters Mobile Museum.

Places we lived, loved or just visited were; Lubbock Texas born and raised with only short visits to New Mexico, Arizona, and California. Then Rantoul Illinois for a year with a duplex that I could not find the last time I visited. Our neighbors moved and gave us Hobo a big German Sheppard to go with Buster Brown our small hound dog. Lake Texoma was one of my favorite destinations. My favorite food spot was Watson Burger; Then Petaluma and Santa Rosa California. What a pretty place! I lived in a small motel, and then a neat old house with a prune orchard that the dogs loved. I stepped on a rusty nail and had a sore foot for a while. A naked man showed up in the front flower bad one night and I had to call the Sheriff. Buster leaned too far out of the car window and fell out.

I bought his and her matching Raleigh bikes. My favorite destination was the park with a lunch cart where you bought French fries in a brown paper bag. We drove around Napa Valley and watched Gliders ride air currents. Keflavik, Iceland was the best place for fish and chips at the USO on base. I camped on lava rocks that sat in a hot spring with snow on the ground. The Northern Lights were spectacular! Our house in Fort Worth, Texas at 1013 Comal is still there but the area has really changed. I rented a camper for my old Chevy pickup and went to Possum Kingdom where deer came right up to the tail gate at breakfast. The second time in Keflavik, Iceland with Mary and Jeff we visited Scotland. It was a chance of a lifetime. Then on to Oklahoma City and we made trips to New Mexico, Arizona, California, Arkansas, Missouri, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Florida, Virginia, Kentucky, Canada Alberta and British Columbia.

I met the Love of my life, a sweet little girl named Mary Hale. I remember going to the drive in movies while in Lubbock Texas, bicycle rides in Santa Rosa, California, and trips to Pagosa Springs, Colorado.

Have I has a great life or what?