AEDC's Kirk Rutland is dancing with his star

  • Published
  • By Philip Lorenz III
  • AEDC/PA
ARNOLD AIR FORCE BASE, Tenn. --  In 1983, before following his dream of becoming a pilot, Kirk Rutland tried something he was less comfortable with, on an impulse.

"I took one ballroom dancing class before I went to flight school, with a community center, kind of as a whim," said Rutland, AEDC's deputy for the maintenance division. "My wife loves to dance, but I never felt comfortable being out there."

Rutland, who once dreamed of becoming an astronaut, proceeded to earn his bachelor's degree in aerospace engineering from Georgia Tech.

Two years after beginning flight training, he and Tracy got married. Any thoughts of learning to dance took a backseat to a busy life. Rutland joined the Navy and flew the A-7 Corsair II, an aircraft carrier-based subsonic light attack aircraft.

After eight years with the military, he transitioned to contracting and then civil service, working mostly with test and evaluation and progressing to the management side of engineering.

"I worked out on the range at China Lake doing weapons testing, and then went back to NAVAIR (the Naval Air Systems Command)," he said. "It was mostly staff jobs and then my last job before coming here was actually as a division head running the target boats out on the Chesapeake Bay and in the ocean.

"The high speed anti-radiation missile (HARM) was actually what took me out to China Lake. I was the project pilot out there and then when I transitioned [to being a] contractor and then DoD, I continued to work the HARM missile program as an engineer."

Rutland's personal life was equally busy as he and his wife started a family.

Back in 1981, AEDC came into the picture when Rutland was still a student at Georgia Tech.

"I was part of AIAA back at Georgia Tech and we came up to AEDC to see the wind tunnels and just to see how you go about doing that kind of engineering," he recalled. "As part of the Major Range and Testing Facility Base, from a test and evaluation management standpoint, I had gotten involved in all the different [aspects] so I knew about AEDC. I knew several of the senior folks here in that kind of context."

To say he was impressed by what he saw at AEDC would be an understatement.

"From an engineering standpoint it was tremendous, remembering all the wind tunnels and the kind of work that was done - it was 'Now we're into some hardcore engineering.'"

Rutland joined AEDC's work force in September 2006, and by 2010 the dynamics of home life had changed.

"The kids finally were out, we were now empty nesters and so it was like, okay, if we're going to dance let's take some lessons," he said. "The timing was right for it. This was just in the last year, around Christmas maybe."

Rutland's wife Tracy had wanted to learn how to dance for years.

"I have enjoyed dancing for a long time," she said. "I knew no structured dances, though, and Kirk was not comfortable just getting out on the floor and moving.

"We have actually talked about ballroom dancing for many years. With kids, it was just too difficult to arrange. Now that kids are gone, we have time and money to pursue our interests."

Rutland spoke about some of the challenges encountered when learning to dance and how he used his professional training to help him and his wife overcome them.

He said one hurdle has been "getting the foot work [down] and making it smooth, making sure the woman looks good."

Fortunately, the couple had started out at the same level.

"We're pretty much even because we'll take a lesson [and] then we'll go home and slowly walk through it," he said. "Unfortunately, I approach it like an engineer and so, it's that muscle memory, maybe it's the combination of athlete and engineer where you kind of walk through it and get it to where it becomes almost second nature so that you don't have to think about it."

Tracy Rutland said she has been facing the same hurdles.

"One of the challenges to learning to dance for me has been remembering the steps," she acknowledged. "There are so many more steps to a dance than I ever imagined. Also, I struggle with figuring out the beat of the song and matching it to the steps of the dance we choose. We try to practice at home and work out the bugs."

Rutland said they have recently moved to the Bronze level.

"We want to go a little further and it's now getting to where it has started smoothing out because we're not thinking about it as much," he said. "That's really the level that I wanted to get to, to where we can get out and dance.

"We want to get to where we get comfortable, especially with the swing, because she likes the up-tempo kind of stuff. We're really not into the competition side of it, although folks there are trying to talk us into competing a little bit, brush up things a little bit. And I think to motivate you to stay current with it, but we're not really - that wasn't our goal, to take it to the competitive level."

Tracy Rutland said the direction they've chosen in dancing was the result of both practical and aesthetic considerations. She said it also helps to have a healthy sense of humor.

"We have concentrated on swing mainly because it seems the most usable dance at a club," she said. "Also, it is a very fun dance. We enjoy the turns and spins a lot. We have done a lot of laughing trying to figure out the footwork. I must say, this has been one of the most fun things that we have done together."

Rutland said it took awhile before they found the right fit for sharing their time, but dancing has been ideal.

"The key is it's something Tracy and I can do together and do it for awhile," he said. "We've tried different sports to do together and that didn't really work out. She would rather be at home reading and I'd be out on the tennis courts and this is the one thing that we can stay together and do.

"That's a big part of it as well - I wanted Tracy to feel comfortable where she could go out and meet more people in a social setting. She was a stay-at-home mom for a number of years and just last year went back to work as the kids were leaving.

"She recognized that she needed to do it [even] when we were in a subdivision in Maryland with other women who were close by. Living in Manchester out in the county -it's not quite the same."