At War and Peace in the Cockpit

It’s hard to pinpoint when Jim Denmark’s leadership qualities started to emerge, or when he first set his sights on a career as an officer and aviator in the United States Navy. But it’s likely that his anchor in a Navy family helped chart his course of honor and service to his country. The retired Commander is the son of a World War II Navy flight engineer, and his two older brothers served in the Navy when Jim was just a youngster in elementary school.

Jim is a member of the Saint Edward’s class of 1976 and was the first graduate of the school to receive an appointment to the Naval Academy at Annapolis. When he graduated from the Academy in 1980, his goal was to fly. And that he did during his 20-year career, which included eight years of flight duty at the height of the Cold War tracking Soviet submarines in a P-3C, a special long-range anti-submarine patrol aircraft.

Read the entire article in the Summer 2010 issue