He’s Air Jordan – of the hero kind.
James Jordan, the parachute-jumping older brother of hoops legend Michael Jordan, headed for Iraq yesterday after winning a battle with the Army to delay his retirement so he could complete a full, yearlong deployment with his troops.
“We are currently at war,” the 47-year-old sergeant major explained. “We are doing things, and it requires leaders to do certain things. That’s what I am, a leader.”
Jordan, a member of the 35th Signal Brigade, which is based at Fort Bragg, N.C., was to have retired next April 29 after spending 30 years in the military. But the father of three requested – and was granted – permission to delay his retirement so he could finish the full deployment. “In the end, you’ve got to figure out what is good for the team. I felt what was good for the team was some stability at the top,” said the older Jordan.
The no-nonsense Jordan has a shaved head and a wry sense of humor. He stands 5-foot-7 to Michael’s 6-foot-6.
After three years of high-school ROTC, he decided the Army was for him. He completed basic training in June 1975, had three assignments in Korea and served briefly in Afghanistan.
At 36, he went to airborne-training school, where most soldiers are in their teens or early 20s. He runs eight miles a day and jumps from planes at least once every three months.
As the senior, noncommissioned officer in the brigade, he is responsible for care of the 2,450 soldiers in the unit, which oversees telephone and satellite systems. He earns basic pay of $62,800 a year – which will be cut in half when he retires in the spring of 2006.
Under Army rules, he can’t hang up his stripes unless he’s been back from his assignment for three months.
Yesterday, he was among 500 brigade soldiers who boarded flights to Kuwait. They will arrive today, spend two days there and then be driven to Baghdad.
(p. 3 in metro)