24 November 1964 – 2 April 1997

Craig Button graduated from Wantagh High School in Wantagh, Long Island, New York. He began flying at age 17 and aspired to be a professional pilot. Button was described as “polite”, “quiet”^[5] and a “perfectionist”^[8] who “rarely drank and never smoked”. One of his instructors remarked that his shoes were always shined.^[5] Button’s next-door neighbor growing up reports that he was “a ridiculously hard worker”.

Button’s father, Richard Button, was a retired lieutenant colonel in the United States Air Force (USAF). His mother, Joan Button, was a devout Jehovah’s Witness. According to a letter written by Button, she raised him “to think that joining the military is wrong” and refused to allow him to wear his college Air Force Reserve Officer Training Corps (AFROTC) uniform at home. Button’s half-sister, Susane, reported that his mother had wanted him to leave the military.^[8]

Button was commissioned through the AFROTC program at New York Institute of Technology in Old Westbury, New York, where he received a degree in aerospace engineering in 1990. He spent four years at the Laughlin Air Force Base in Texas as a Cessna T-37 Tweet first assignment instructor pilot before being transferred to the 355th Fighter Wing, a Fairchild A-10 Thunderbolt II unit at Davis–Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson, Arizona.^[5] He had been a USAF pilot for five years before the crash.^[3]