As a junior at Cape Girardeau Central High School, Michael Goodin went flying with a friend and knew then and there he wanted to go into the Air Force.
“I just love the feeling of flying,” now retired Air Force Col. Goodin said. “It’s a sense of freedom, a sense of responsibility. ... That was what I wanted to do.”
Born in Wisconsin, Goodin said his father worked for the American Red Cross and the family moved around quite a bit. They eventually made it to Cape Girardeau, where Goodin would attend junior high and high school.
As a high schooler, Goodin said he wasn’t really sure what he wanted to do as a career and at one point considered architecture.
But when classmate Mark Sorenson took him flying, he made up his mind.
“I was hooked. I was like, ‘That’s ... that’s what I want to do,’” Goodin said. “Absolutely loved it.”
He said he wanted to get into the Air Force Academy, but his grades in high school weren’t quite where they needed to be.
He graduated from Cape Girardeau Central High School in 1987. In 1991, he graduated from Southeast Missouri State University, where he went through Southeast’s ROTC program.
He eventually passed flight school. Some of his earlier days in the Air Force took him to places such as New Mexico, Florida and Italy for a deployment.
While in Italy, he met his wife, Ivonne, with whom he now has two children, Erica and Gabriel. He also has another daughter, Lainey, from his first marriage.
His time as a pilot was spent primarily in AC-130 gunships, he said.
He said the overall interaction of flying in a sophisticated airplane with 13 members on board and working together is something that is “always going to stand out being something special in my mind.”
But there came a time when being a pilot was no longer an option. He eventually was medically grounded because of an inner-ear issue.
“I wanted to serve my country, but I want to do that through flying,” Goodin said. “So, when that was taken away, it was kind of like ... ‘What do I do now?’”
But he said his sense of service was still there. Shortly after he was medically grounded, the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks took place.
“That just, you know, reaffirmed my commitment to want to stay in and serve the country,” he said. “The sense of just wanting to stand up for our country and take care of our citizens.”
Goodin decided to stay in the Air Force and make the transition to the intelligence world.
“It’s a whole different perspective,” he said. “But I think, you know, my experiences as a pilot helped me become a better intelligence officer.”
He said many of the intelligence officers at the time didn’t get to see “the front end of conflict” and had never flown over a combat area.
“I was able to bring that perspective into the intelligence world,” he said.
His time in intelligence took him to Hawaii, the Pentagon, Baghdad, Iraq and Qatar.
From 2013 to 2016, he was in Germany working for the U.S. Africa Command. That’s where he said he was in charge of all intelligence collection for the United States forces on the continent of Africa.
“I got to travel up and down through Africa and do a lot of good things,” Goodin said.
He said he and his wife wanted to consider retirement as his daughter was about to enter high school. That time came toward the end of his stint in Germany.
After 25 years active-duty with the Air Force, he decided it was time to retire and thought about what was next in his life.
He decided to see about getting an Air Force Junior ROTC program started at Cape Girardeau Central. He was successful, and the program is now in its second school year. Goodin is the program’s senior aerospace science instructor.
“If you would have asked me 10 years ago, I’d say ‘No. No way. ... That’s not in my cards,’” he said about teaching high school.
Toward the end of his time in Germany, he said he saw an Army Junior ROTC unit doing good things with high school cadets and it “piqued my interest a little bit.”
Goodin said there is a satisfaction that comes from working with the students and “seeing them grow and succeed and develop.”
“If you really look at it, I don’t think there’s anything more important than trying to prepare today’s youth to go out and succeed,” Goodin said about teaching. “They’re going to be the future leaders of the country, of the county, of the town, of the businesses, the military. So the better I can prepare them, the better they’ll be able to serve.”
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