Week in Review : MAJOR EVENTS, IMAGES AND PEOPLE IN ORANGE COUNTY NEWS : MISCELLANY / NEWSMAKERS AND MILESTONES

The Marine Corps decided this week to release Lance Cpl. Howard A. Foote Jr., a would-be “Top Gun” fighter pilot whose dream plummeted when he flew too high in a glider.

The 21-year-old Los Alamitos native took a jet fighter on a late night Fourth of July joy ride from El Toro Marine Corps Air Station after learning that a medical ailment caused by a glider flight would probably disqualify him from fighter training.

The decision to turn Foote loose with a less than honorable discharge was not an easy one, Marine officials said.

“This was a very unusual case in which a Marine with a tremendous amount of skill and great potential did a very stupid thing which could have resulted in a tragic loss of life,” said Gen. D.E.P. Miller, commanding officer of the base, in a statement released to the press.

Miller said the charges filed against Foote “are very serious and his lack of judgment and violation of trust make it impossible to keep him in the Marine Crops.”

“However, I feel that the 4 1/2 months he has served in confinement, coupled with an other than honorable discharge, will adequately serve justice in this case,” Miller said.

Sitting in a restaurant after release from the Camp Pendleton brig, Foote said of his flight: “I just had to fly a jet one time. And I knew if I didn’t do it now, I’d never get to. . . . Well, now I’ve flown the plane, and I know what it’s like.”

He said that as soon as he pushed the plane’s throttle to take off, “my head snapped back against the ejection seat, and I was happy. It was natural. That was my home.”