About Wayne Holcomb

Like many of you, I ain’t from around these parts…! I was stationed here as a Navy pilot, and when I retired, I became a Virginia resident. I think life is good in Hampton Roads. My own small hometown in Kansas has now grown to a bustling population of 331, but it was less urban in my youth! My Midwestern family has been farmers and blue collar workers for as far back as we know.

I grew up in farm houses without indoor plumbing. Yep, so imagine where the “bathroom” was! (Winters were cold; that’s where I got my speed!) We had party line phones early on. No A/C. Then we moved to into a trailer house “in town.” I see now that, as far as amenities go, I was about a generation behind the rest of America, but it was not until I went to college, and saw what others had, that I realized how rural and poor we were. I really didn’t care. Still don’t.

Nearly everything I know that matters today I learned in church. I learned about service, that God is concerned about people who are hurting, and we should be too. I learned that we all have a destiny, a “calling,” for which we were born and built to achieve for God’s glory and our personal fulfillment. We all do.

I attended Oral Roberts University for my undergraduate degree. There I served as a Wing Chaplain and a Resident Advisor and lead missionary teams to various parts of the world in the summers. I became the first person in my family ever to graduate from college. I am not sure if my Mom cried because I graduated or because the tuition payments were coming to an end! My grandparents drove down to Tulsa; it was a big deal.

For the next era of my life, for 20 years, I flew airplanes off aircraft carriers for the U.S. Navy and served as a Naval Officer. I ended my career with more than 200 arrested landings on aircraft carriers. (By the way, do you know the definition of a successful carrier arrested landing? You walk away!) I also served as a squadron Legal Officer.