Fighter Pilot Who Escaped Bosnia Awes Fifth-Graders

Stick a war hero in a room with 50 kids and what do they want to know?

How many bugs did U.S. Air Force Capt. Scott F. O’Grady have to eat while hiding from the Bosnian troops who shot down his F-16 fighter jet in 1995?

O’Grady was way ahead of them:

“I had some water in my survival pack, and I had to eat certain kinds of insects and plants to survive,” O’Grady told the Santa Clarita Christian School fifth-graders whom he met during a visit to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.

“And for those of you who don’t eat ants,” O’Grady confided with calculated relish, “they’re crunchy, and they’re sour.”

“EEEEuuwww!!” chorused the giggling 10-year-olds.

And off they went, the jet pilot and the kids, in a freewheeling hourlong session of Q and A.

The kids peppered him with questions, and O’Grady recalled his six-day game of Bosnian hide-and-seek, passing on a little homespun philosophy to boot.

Is he still flying jets?

“I still fly the F-16, but I’m in the Air Force Reserves now . . . at a base called Hill Air Force Base north of Salt Lake City,” said the 31-year-old pilot. “I fly two to three days a week. The rest of the time I’m a civilian and I can do what I want, so I give talks, I visit schools and I do speeches and some charity work.”

Has he ever shot down a plane?

“If I told ya,” he joked, “I’d have ta kill ya!”

Did he hide in one place or move around?

“I had three places I was hiding in,” said O’Grady, who used a hand-held satellite-navigation computer to pinpoint his position, then radioed coded messages to the Marines, who eventually rescued him.

“I didn’t want to make any noise, because if they heard, it might give me away,” he said. “I laid very still and moved very quietly. Just rolling over from my back to my side, it might take me 20 minutes to do it. And when I unzipped my zipper, that might take me 10 or 15 minutes--unzipping it just one tooth at a time.”

He thought of his home and his family the whole time, and prayed he would come out of it alive, O’Grady said.

Has he ever killed anybody?

“Nope,” he said firmly. “You know, violence is never the answer to any problem.” While American kids enjoy freedom, children in some countries do not, and the U.S. military sometimes has to step in to protect their freedom, he said, explaining, “We were there to stop people from killing people.”

What did he look like when he got on the Marine Corps chopper that rescued him?

“I looked ugly. I had a beard, and I lost a lot of weight, and I smelled really bad,” he said, eliciting more giggles.

Did he meet the president?

“Yes I did. Which one?,” he said. “After I got back, I met President Clinton and President Reagan, President Bush, and I got a letter from President Carter.”

Reagan sent a huge jar emblazoned with the presidential seal. “And guess what he sent me inside,” O’Grady said. “Jelly beans! And I ate some, and gave some to my father and some to my mother and some to my sister and then I sealed the jar. And those are gonna be the oldest jelly beans in the world.”

Kids jiggled in their seats as they listened, rapt, eyes focused on the slight hero in deck shoes and polo shirt.

Some skimmed Reader’s Digest articles on O’Grady they had brought, then shot their hands skyward for a chance at a question.

What did he think--as the Marine Corps helicopter lifted him from his hiding place--when a Bosnian ground troop’s bullet slammed into a Marine’s canteen beside him?

“The bullet hit the canteen and it fell on the floor, and the Marine next to him picked up the bullet and put it in his pocket,” he said. “I looked around and saw the camouflaged faces of the Marines all around me, and it was a 19-year-old boy. That’s how old they were, they were just nine years older than you.”

Then O’Grady hit them with The Question, and answered it himself: “When we came home, a lot of people called me a hero. But what do you think a hero is? A hero is somebody who saves someone else’s life. . . .

“If you want to be a hero, don’t look for the recognition,” he said. “Look for the reward of helping someone else. Your teachers are heroes, and your moms and dads are heroes, too.”

After the last of the questions, O’Grady stayed 30 minutes longer to pose for snapshots and autograph note pads and dollar bills and sneakers.

The kids ate it up.

Some relished the details, like how he wrung rainwater from his socks to drink, how he spent hours with his face in the dirt and his green-gloved hands shielding his ears so the Bosnian searchers would not spot the color of his flesh amid the forest greenery.

“He told me that if you have a dream, you can accomplish anything in this country,” said Stephen Crawford, 10, of Saugus. “I found that moving, sort of. I thought he would just tell us about his life, but he’s a very cool guy, to survive out there. You have to have a lot of brains to do that.”

“I thought it was really interesting, it was interesting that he knew what ants tasted like, and what it was like being shot down,” said Becky Williams, 10, of Saugus. “And he told me, ‘Whatever you want to do when you grow up, don’t listen to anybody who says you can’t do it.’ ”

And O’Grady, who visited the library at the invitation of the Reagans while en route to yet another motivational speech, said he enjoyed it, too.

“It’s great, just the energy level you have with the kids, they’re all excited,” he said. “I enjoyed it as much as they did.”