From an early age, Ret. Air Force Master Sgt. Roosevelt McCombs knew he wanted more in life than what his hometown of Newnan, Ga. could offer.

McCombs was born in 1944, one of nine siblings in a sharecropping family. The family grew mainly cotton but also peanuts and sorghum. A home garden, egg-laying hens and pigs rounded out the earnings.

"We worked on share. The first two bales to the owner, the third bale is yours. Deal was, he furnished everything including the house and whole works. You always got a bill. And the end of the year, you'd never make enough to complete the thing," said McCombs. "Nowadays they call it a percentage worker."

"My grandfather was a farmer, my father was a farmer and construction worker during the off season, my brother was a construction worker, my uncles were farmers," said McCombs. "They were doing the same thing for each group. They would work and come home and do a little recreation on the weekend and go back to work. They were having babies. I wanted more."

When Air Force recruiters came to his high school, McCombs, without asking his family, pre-enlisted his junior year. He shipped out right after he graduated Central High School in June 1963.

Two things struck him about the world beyond Newnan. "The way you were treated as an individual once I left my hometown, I didn't think that was possible." He went to a demonstration in the 1960s and saw people of different races socializing. "It was a waking to me, regardless of what race you were, everybody was happy. I said what's going on?"

"The second rude awakening was social communication, the network. I didn't realize how strong it was back then. The old saying, ‘It's not how much you know, it's who you know.'"

After basic training at Lackland AFB, Texas, McCombs was stationed at Homestead, Fla. where he and other minority airmen were assigned to clean up at the supply warehouse. "I wrote my mother and said I did not sign up to be that person. I wanted to work with aircraft. I learned real early not to sit back and pout."

He managed to get assigned to a maintenance squadron but was still a supply man. "I had an opportunity to go out to different shops. I was still asking the question, how can I get one of those jobs (working with aircraft)? Different people would quietly speak to me. I met this one guy, who happened to be Jewish. He said ‘McCombs, you think you have it hard, I'm Jewish.' I didn't know anything about the Jewish people, about the Holocaust. That was just farfetched for me... He gave me a book and said ‘Read this.' It was about the Holocaust. I started reading it. I apologized."

"He said ‘This is what you do - your last name is McCombs. If I'm speaking to you on the phone and you take some of that southern drag out of your voice, it'll be a little difficult to really identify you.'"

So McCombs applied and interviewed by phone for a training school and got in. "I sent the application and they accepted me and sent me off to school in Champaign, Illinois. I was assigned to planes and scheduling, production control... I said ‘Man, I like this.'"

But when he came back from the school, "Now everybody could see me in living color. They assigned me to aircraft weapons. It's this little room. We had 60 B-52s, we had the tankers too. You sit there all day long with a big old in-basket and you file these into the yellow jackets."

So McCombs decided to volunteer for overseas assignments. He was eventually sent to U-Tapao in Thailand in 1970.

"We were working long shifts and dropping a lot of bombs. I really got a chance to work the boards and participate in my field. I loved it, just sitting there making decisions.

"We would ready five aircraft for every mission. We flew 11 missions a day. We called them ‘ball games.' We had 11 ball games a day. We'd send off three aircraft for every ball game. And they came back empty. They dropped them bombs somewhere."

He was also stationed at Newfoundland, Canada, Roswell, New Mexico, Osceola, Michigan, Texas, Maryland, and temporary duty in Oklahoma, Alaska, Arkansas, Ohio, as well as Germany and Japan.

"Working in that environment, constantly being passed over for promotion, I bailed out of regular (active duty) after 10 years."

McCombs joined the Air Force Reserve in 1973 for another 16.5 years, also working as a grading and hauling contractor. He tried to get a job at Delta doing what he had done before, scheduling. "They told me we're not hiring for that position, we hire from within. They offered me a job in customer service. I said that's OK."

He retired from the military after a total of 26.5 years in 1990 and went to work for the Department of Corrections in Michigan until 2003.

In 2006, he and his wife Brenda moved to Rockdale County where his second oldest daughter lived. All his four children graduated from college and two have Master's degrees.

Now the 71-year-old father of four and grandfather seven volunteers as the coordinator and driver for the Covington DAV's transportation vans, which picks up veterans at a location in Conyers and Covington on Tuesdays and Thursdays and takes them for appointments at the VA and medical appointments. To schedule a pickup, call 404-271-6392.

"I have a real soft spot for the veterans," said McCombs. "About 35 percent of the homeless in Georgia are military veterans. Because of the trauma. It's too unreal... We only talk to each other. We speak our language."

"You go through all this warfare, training. Civilians don't understand, or they understand but don't have the patience. By now, you're smoking something. They pile you with all these doggone pills. And you're supposed to get your job back and live happily ever after?"

If he won the lottery, his dream would be to open a veteran's center, with barracks for short stays and hot meals. "A nonprofit, strictly volunteers. It would consist of a living area, TV, music room, rec room, a computer area, clothes drop-off. A 24-hour operation... It would be a place that you could come and communicate."

For more information or to sign up a veteran for transportation to a VA appointment or medical appointment, call 404-271-6392.