CENTRE — For someone about to turn 90, Tom Brock Jordan still has a firm handshake.

During a visit to his home last week to talk about his recent trip to Washington, D.C. the World War II veteran waxed on a wide range of topics, though he clearly has a couple of favorites: flying and Alabama football.

The former World War II pilot lives alone now, in his home just off Highway 411 near Centre. “We had to move it up here when they built the lake,” Jordan explains. Marianne, his wife of 60 years, has been in the nursing home for about a year.

Jordan (for out-of-towners, that's pronounced JERD-n) turns down the volume on the TV and begins an impromptu, room-by-room tour, along the way pointing out some his favorite photos from years gone by.

“That's Charley Pell, he coached Jacksonville State, Clemson and then Florida,” Jordan says. “And there's coach Bryant, of course.”

The photo on the wall shows the Alabama football legend holding a golf club, but Jordan says the Bear wasn't a big fan of the game.

“He didn't like playing, wasn't worth a cuss,” Jordan laughs.

Further down the hallway, Jordan points out “one of the kids' rooms,” then nods toward a framed letter informing him of his induction into the University of Alabama's A-Club, on April 19, 1995.

“What was that date again,” asks Jordan, who doesn't bother squinting to read it himself. At 89, his eyesight isn't what it used to be.

But his mind is as sharp as ever. Jordan quickly recalls the names of the former Alabama coaches whose photos line his walls. For years, the local farmer and businessman hosted an annual cookout that the Tide football coach, whoever it happened to be, faithfully attended.

“It finally got too big so I had to quit doing it,” says Jordan, who is alongside the former coaches in most of the picture frames. “There's Shula, and Dennis Franchione, and Mike DuBose. I think DuBose was a better coordinator than he was a coach.”

Next, Jordan switches his thoughts to flying. After World War II started, Jordan says he decided to take an Army Air Corps test because he thought flying planes would be less dangerous than storming enemy beaches with the infantry.

After he passed the initial test, Jordan was sent to Biloxi, Miss. Another series of examinations there would determine if Jordan was to become a pilot, bombardier or navigator.

“It was an agility test, putting pegs in a board,” he says. “And I qualified to be a pilot.”

After several stops all across Texas for various types of flight training, Jordan got his wings and commission. He ended spending most of the war as a flight instructor in the North American AT-6 at another Texas base near the Oklahoma line.

“I was never in love with flying like most pilots are, but I was never scared of it,” he says.

After recounting a story about a hotshot pilot he saw killed when his plane disintegrated during a tricky flyover maneuver, Jordan recalls a sign he once saw over the door of a flight room somewhere. “It said, 'There's a lot of old pilots and a lot of bold pilots, but not many old, bold pilots.'”

After the war, Jordan liked flying enough to keep at it. He crop-dusted cotton field for a decade. “Back then the boll weevils were bad, so we had to dust to kill them,” Jordan says.

One day, Jordan was flying low over a cotton field when he caught himself worrying about a faulty mechanical part back home on the family cotton gin.

“Crop dusting was fun for a while but it got to be work, and then there I was, 10 feet off the ground, thinking about something else besides flying that plane.”

After he parked his crop duster Jordan stayed in the air, occasionally flying recruits in and out of Tuscaloosa for coach Bryant. “I had a six-place Cessna,” Jordan says. “My son has still got it.”

Jordan was also one of 50 or so knowledgeable football men that Bryant had spread around the state throughout the 1960s and '70s to help keep him apprised about the status of potential recruits.

“I could tell some stories about that man, but like me and you sitting here talking? No one felt comfortable around him, even though he was as humble as can be,” Jordan says.

Once, in the 1960s, Jordan was sitting in Bryant's office with several other recruiters and assistant coaches, along with Bart Starr's father.

“Someone asked if Bart ever thought about going to Auburn before he came to Tuscaloosa back in the early 1950s,” Jordan begins, a grin spreading across his face. “He told the fellow that he once heard Bart say he'd rather get splinters … from sitting on the bench at Alabama than play on the first team at Auburn.”

Jordan says his sons and daughter accompanied him to Huntsville the night before his Honor Flight, which lifted off for a day-long visit to Washington, D.C. on Oct. 24. Since 2005, the non-profit Honor Flight Network (www.honorflight.org)  has been flying World War II veterans to the nation's capital to visit the World War II Memorial.

“I think I was the only World War II pilot on that flight,” Jordan said. The two Air Force pilots who accompanied the flight to Washington, D.C. even let Jordan take a look inside the cockpit of one of their F-16s.

“The flight left about 5:30 in the morning, and those F-16s flew off our wings all the way there,” Jordan says.

Jordan says the busload of veterans and their chaperones zigzagged all over Washington and made multiple stops for photos, despite the weather.

“We went all over, but it was raining so we didn't get out much,” Jordan says. “Suited me.”

Jordan says he didn't mind spending most of the day on the bus, since he had already been to the capital once before. Jordan doesn't recall the date offhand, but it was May 15, 1972.

“I was a director years ago with the Coosa Alabama Waterway System,” Jordan says. “We were up there talking about navigation on the river, and in between the House and Senate hearings, someone told us George Wallace had been shot, in Maryland.”

Jordan says he, Rep. Ralph Meade and some other Alabamians quickly hopped into a car and drove to the hospital where the governor, a candidate for president, was being treated.

“We couldn't get in, but Ralph Meade could talk his way out of anything,” Jordan says with a laugh. “They had the whole hospital surrounded by the National Guard and I don't think the president could have gotten in. But after 15 minutes, Ralph stuck his head out the door and motioned for us to come on in.”

Jordan says the most moving part of last week's trip, for him, came when the Honor Flight returned to Huntsville.

“As we got off the plane, there were 200-300 people there to greet us,” he says. “You'd think we had won the war.”