AMERICUS — James (Jim) C. Pierce Jr., traveled approximately 1,500 miles recently from Castle Rock, Colorado, to Columbus, Georgia, for his 50th high school reunion. The reminiscing about those early years, led him to travel another 60 miles to Americus, for a visit to his other alma mater, South Georgia Technical College.
“I have had a great life,” said Pierce, who graduated from South Georgia Tech in 1971,  with an aviation maintenance diploma and an airframe and power point certificate from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). “I really could not have imagined doing anything else in my career. I traveled to 44 different countries and 48 states all on someone else’s dime while doing something that I love.”
Back in 1969, Pierce was a young Vietnam veteran with a wife and son. He had loved working on helicopters as a member of the U.S. Army 101st Airborne Division so when his term of duty ended he began to research schools that could provide FAA training.
“Back then there were two technical schools in Georgia and South Georgia Tech provided aviation maintenance training. If you were a resident of Georgia, you could attend tuition free. So I came down for a visit and while I was here, I applied and got a job working as a night shift maintenance man at Manhattan Shirt Co. They figured if I could work on helicopters, I could work on sewing machines,” laughed Pierce.
Pierce attended class at South Georgia Tech in the daytime and worked at Manhattan at night. That part-time job paid about $2 an hour. He was able to double that amount within two years and by the time Pierce retired he was not getting paid by the hour.
After 46 years of working in the aviation maintenance industry he had bumped his salary up to over six figures. Not a bad return on a free education at a technical institute that had not even been elevated to college status.
“I graduated from South Georgia Tech on a Wednesday and left driving to Savannah to take a job with Grumman Aircraft in Savannah. My wife, son, and I arrived in Savannah to set up our apartment on Thursday. My wife had our daughter on Friday, and I reported to work on Monday. It was a busy week,” Pierce said.
Pierce worked at Grumman for two years and then took a job at Allied Signal, which is Honeywell today. He changed jobs a few years later to work for FMC in Chicago as director of Maintenance and stayed there for over 22 years before moving to Colorado to work for Consolidated Investment. He retired from there in 2013.
“Thanks to the education I received from South Georgia Tech, I had an awesome career. I got to do something that I love for 46 years. Not everybody can say that,” said Pierce, who added that “aviation technology has changed considerably over the past four decades and continues to change today, but I enjoyed every minute of it and I am very grateful for the opportunities that I had to work in this industry.”
Pierce and his wife, Cheryl, live in Castle Rock, Colorado, and have two grown children.