Cassity, James Shelby, Jr., Lt Gen

I was stationed with Jim Cassity two times. At Hanscom AFB in Mass, he was the instructor that taught a class to incoming officers about the systems procurement process. He was very good. He was an L/C and worked for Gen Herres in the foreign military sales office. I was a Capt and had a car pool friend who worked in the same office as L/C Cassity. So I kept up with goings on in his office. This was in 1976 or 77. 



In 1980, I was assigned to Hq AFCC at Scott and Col Cassity was the head of the Programs Office (EP). Gen Herres was the CC at the time. He was a very good boss. I loved some of his management saying like when a program wanted to rush a schedule he would say, "If you want it bad, you'll get it bad." That is so true. When he left Scott, I personally made his shadow box going away present from the Programs Division. It included a wood outline of the state of Ill. I spent many hours on it. I hope he liked it. 



After he left, I moved to the Telephone Systems Office at Scott and he made a couple of stars and was head of all the communications units in Europe. I worked for a boss who was a real argumentative person. I decided that life was too short to put up with him so I retired. After that my old boss went to Europe to brief the telephone program to Gen Cassity and was a real butt with him. Cassity pick up hisphone and called the commander of AFCC. My old boss was fired before he got back to the states. Gen Cassity repaid the time I spent on his going away shadow box.



I really liked the man. By the way, at Scott he had a brick on his desk. The kind with 3 holes in it. It had a sign that said "Aggie bowling ball". I love that.



Miles Martin

Major USAF retired