After nineteen years in the service, he’d flown to Nashville to buy a house in anticipation of working as a songwriter in his retirement, something he’d always done during downtime in the air force. To protect his savings, he’d lined up a job with a local flying service. The owner was a big admirer of Danny’s war record, and one job perk was flying country music stars around the state. Starlette had been working for a real estate agency, and she’d showed Danny a couple of houses in Franklin. His songwriting aspirations hadn’t impressed her; in fact she’d questioned his ability to buy in that neighborhood. But his upcoming gig flying country music stars had the glamour she’d come to the city to find. Danny still had a year left at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida to round out his twenty, but he was soon commuting to Nashville on every leave, to shop his songs and to spend time with Starlette. When she turned up pregnant, they decided to marry, and six months later, their daughter, Jenny, was born-beautiful and healthy.

Danny was only two weeks from retirement when the World Trade Center was attacked. After that, he’d refused to consider quitting, despite Starlette’s protestations. She didn’t have to wait long for his return. He deployed to Afghanistan but was shot down three months later, in an incident he was lucky to survive. He took this as a hint from fate and returned to Nashville with his discharge papers in hand. Soon he was dividing his time between flying singers, selling songs, sleeping with his new wife, and raising his daughter. The only problem in paradise was that he quickly tired of being a flying chauffeur. Jet-set hillbillies were getting on his nerves. Some were truly wonderful people, but others were real jerks. With the fans they were warm and sincere, but as soon as they hit the chopper, they were bitching about the hassles of dealing with the public. After six months without selling a song, Danny was ready to bail out.