The Biography of Gregory Robertson
Gregory Robertson was born and raised in Richmond, VA and attended local public schools prior to entering the Staunton Military Academy in September of 1966. He spent four years at the Academy rising to the rank of Cadet Lt. Colonel in command of the First Battalion and graduated in June of 1970. Among his achievements during his time at SMA included receiving the Earth-Space Science Medal and the Physics Medal for obtaining the highest grade for those subjects. He also was Editor-in-Chief of the Kablegram (the cadet newspaper) his senior year.
After graduating from SMA, Gregory went to the College Of William & Mary. During his first semester there, he decided that college at that time was not the correct thing for him. He left William & Mary to determine what his direction in life should be. Returning to his home in Richmond, he began working in March of 1971 for the AT&T’s Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Company as a Lineman and Cable Splicer. He also began to work weekends as a Rock&Roll Roadie with various Bands and Production Companies in the Richmond area
In May of 1972, Gregory was drafted into the US Army. After training, the Army assigned him to a Nike Hercules Missile site in the Mountains of California as a Military Police Sentry Dog Handler. The Army released him from active duty in May of 1974. Gregory returned to Richmond and his job with the telephone company along with his weekend work as a Roadie. He also started working for a Virginia Beach based Concert Production Company as a Stage Manager. This lasted until August of 1975 when Gregory felt he had determined a direction for his life and returned to College to obtain a degree.
He first attended J. Sergeant Reynolds Community College in Richmond for two years in their Engineering School before transferring to Old Dominion University in Norfolk, VA. During this time, he still worked weekends as a Roadie or as a Stage Manager. He graduated from ODU in May of 1979 with a Bachelor’s Degree in Electrical Engineering and decided to remain at ODU to pursue a Master’s Degree in Electrical Engineering.
A chance meeting with the President of the ODU skydiving club led him to the Suffolk, VA, Airport on November 17, 1979 for his first parachute jump. It wasn’t long before Gregory was hooked and decided to leave graduate school and seek employment in Phoenix, AZ where he could skydive year round at the Coolidge Parachute Center.
Gregory went to work at AT&T’s Western Electric cable and wire factory located in the western part of Phoenix. Every Friday after work he would load his van with his parachute gear and drive down to spend the weekend skydiving. He obtained his Static Line Jumpmaster rating in September of 1980 and earned his Static Line Instructor rating in June of 1981. He then took over as the chief instructor for the parachute school at the Coolidge Parachute Center. In early 1982, the United States Parachute Association appointed him as the Safety & Training Advisor (ST&A) for the Coolidge Parachute Center.
In late 1982, the United States Parachute Association invited Gregory to attend the first Accelerated Freefall (AFF) certification course held in the Western United States. Upon completion of the course on November 1st, he became the first certified AFF Instructor in Arizona. Realizing that AFF was the best way to teach people to skydive, he ended the Static Line program at Coolidge and converted the parachute school to AFF only. Thus, the Coolidge Parachute Center became the first Drop zone in the world to offer AFF as its only training method.
Gregory continued running the AFF Skydiving school at the Coolidge Parachute Center until Larry Hill of Skydive Arizona bought the Coolidge drop zone in September of 1986. Larry brought his own skydiving instructors with him and Gregory decided to cease formal instruction but went to work at Skydive Arizona in a load organizer role. Also, Larry Hill asked Gregory to remain as the ST&A for the drop zone and Gregory agreed to stay in that role.
During the week, Gregory furthered his Engineering career at the AT&T Western Electric factory. He worked various assignments in multiple areas of the factory operations. After gaining the required amount of experience and passing the certification test given by the State of Arizona Board of Technical Registration, Gregory earned his Professional Registration as an Electrical Engineer in 1986. As a result of this, AT&T promoted Gregory to Senior Engineer and appointed him the Electrical Engineer of Record at the factory.
Then, in April of 1987, Gregory had what would be considered the defining moment of his life. During the annual Coolidge Easter Boogie (a.k.a. large gathering of skydivers), Gregory spotted a fellow skydiver get knocked unconscious in the air and dove to her rescue. He was successful in reaching her and opening her parachute before she hit the ground. This was the first successful air-to-air rescue in history. The rescue caught the attention of the world media and Gregory became the most famous skydiver on the planet. Full details of the rescue, the ensuing media frenzy, and awards Gregory received in recognition of the rescue can be found on the website www.gregoryprobertson.com/15minutesoffame.
During all of this media attention, a local flight instructor offered to teach Gregory to fly airplanes. Gregory took advantage of this offer and soon had obtained his Private and Commercial Pilot’s License with Single and Multi-engine Aircraft ratings. In late 1988, he began to work part time on weekends at Skydive Arizona as a jump pilot. He flew first in the single-engine Cessna before moving into the twin-engine Beech D-18 and as a co-pilot in the DC-3. Gregory obtained his Pilot-in-Command type rating in the DC-3 in February of 1992. He also obtained his LSO certification in the drop zone’s Turbine DHC-6 Twin Otter in May of 1992. In October of 1993, Gregory was selected to be the Main Competition Pilot at the World Parachuting Meet held at Skydive Arizona.
Also during this time, Gregory continued advancing his professional career with AT&T. He accepted a special assignment to look at innovative ways to increase sales of the cable and wire products and was able to obtain a 10-year exclusive contract with Pacific Telephone for all of their cable and wire needs. As a reward for obtaining this contract, AT&T promoted Gregory to Senior Engineering Manager and assigned him to lead the Western Construction Division, which managed all of AT&T’s building construction activities in the Western United States and Alaska. This organization had a 500 million dollar a year budget.
Gregory remained at this job until late 1999 when AT&T reassigned him to be the main Contract Administrator for their Western Division Next Generation Fiber Build project. This project’s goals were to replace all of the fiber optics and facilities from Chicago, Saint Louis, and Dallas to Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Seattle. This project had a budget of 2 billion dollars and a timeline of three years.
In late 2001, AT&T offered Gregory an early retirement package that he decided he couldn’t pass up. On February 21st 2002, Gregory retired from AT&T after thirty-one-year association with the company. He then contracted back with AT&T as a consultant until the fiber installation project completed in April of 2003. After that, Gregory decided to permanently leave Corporate America. He also at that time decided to leave skydiving and flying to seek a new direction in his life.
A year later, after talking his wife into also retiring, they moved to the mountains of Southern New Mexico to live away from the large cities they had resided in while working. They settled in Silver City, NM and began building a retirement home. Doing the majority of the work themselves, they completed it in early 2010.
In 2007, before the completion of their new home, Gregory had begun research into the beginnings of The Staunton Military Academy. The interest in this was due to some discrepancies he had discovered between articles in early yearbooks and later catalogs. This research turned into a 10-year labor of love to document SMA’s true history from its founding to its final demise. The result of this research became The Staunton Military Academy History Project and is available for viewing on the internet at www.smahistory.com.
The researching of his old school brought back memories of his time there and some of the humorous antics and happenings he experienced. He decided to document those and turned out his first book, “Life As A Cadet – Volume 1”.
Gregory discovered that he enjoyed storytelling and set about writing several other books. First to come out was a Vietnam Era Mystery Suspense novel titled “Southern Roadie”. Then Gregory began a series of Skydiving related novels under the series title of The Vertical Speed Chronicles. Two books of this series have been published to date and the third will be published in soon.
In late 2016, the skies called out to Gregory and he decided to return to skydiving. He did his recurrency jump in February of 2017 and continues to jump actively at Skydive Arizona.