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Rocky’s Reloading Room |
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Rocky Raab is currently self-unemployed. That means I’m retired, but describe myself as a writer. That’s my true passion. I specialize in reloading and shooting topics, and have been published in all major outdoors and shooting publications, both monthly and annuals. To date, I have had 50+ articles published on these topics. I’ve been a shooter since the age of six, and a reloader since the age of ten. That’s a half century of fooling around with guns and reading every word about guns and ammo I could find.
In previous careers, I was a pilot in the Air Force. I flew 300 combat missions in Vietnam supposedly as a forward air controller, but actually in a covert intelligence mission that was recently the subject of a television documentary called “Suicide Missions.” Hmmm. After my combat tour I became an instructor pilot and taught Iranians to fly jets. Hmmm again. My novels are about those flying years.
Later, I was a public relations officer for the Air Force space program at Cape Canaveral, and then for NASA at Kennedy Space Center. I was the talking head in upwards of 2,000 on-camera interviews about NASA, the Space Shuttle and various space missions. I was one of the countdown commentators who served as the “voice of NASA” during space launches. You know… the guy who tells all about the flight, the payload, the crew and such, and then ends up by counting backwards. (When I was a kid watching the first US manned launches, I didn’t want to be an astronaut as much as I wanted to be the guy that counts backwards. Poor career choice…there are only three people in the world who do that, but I eventually became one of them!)
After I left NASA, I moved to Utah to be the media relations manager for Thiokol, the people who make the space shuttle’s solid rocket boosters. I started the job six months before one of those boosters failed and caused the Challenger accident. From that moment until the Space Shuttle flew again three years later is when I got all this gray hair. Ever wonder what it’d be like to be on 60 Minutes and have Mike Wallace ask you on camera how it feels to murder seven American heroes? Don’t ask.
When the bottom fell out of the defense and space industry as the “peace dividend,” I marked time for seven years working in a gun store and writing. I also was building up my custom earplug business. I did that for 15 years, until I became a Grandpa and turned 60. That’s when I decided to hang it up. Now, I can spend most of my day writing, which is where all this web stuff came in. Now, right now, as you read this, I’m probably sitting at this keyboard and pecking away. Unless I’m reloading ammo, or testing loads at the gun range, or varmint hunting, or playing golf, or reading, or fishing, or…
I also want to mention that I’d probably not be who or what I am without my wonderful wife of 35+ years, or my two gorgeous daughters. But if I got started talking about them, this would turn into a tome instead of a short sketch. So we’ll just stop here.
And that’s a small (probably boring) look at who this Rocky guy is.
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