HAZEN - Hazen's most famous military man will be home for America's military holiday.

Eldon Joersz, 64, who holds the world record for the fastest jet aircraft flight, will speak at a Memorial Day program at 10 a.m. Monday at the Hazen High School theater.

He retired as a major general in the U.S. Air Force in 1997 and if he chooses to, he will have much to say to his old hometown.

Joersz graduated from Hazen High School in 1962 in the old brick three-story building where all grades were together. His dad was a baker and the family lived not far from the bakery in a small house alongside the alley.

Fourteen years later, after college at North Dakota State University in Fargo and after years training as an air force pilot, he got into the cockpit of an SR-71 Blackbird jet, developed for high speed, high altitude surveillance during the Cold War era.

Speed was tested at an altitude of 80,000 feet in the desert over Edwards Air Force Base in an air corridor 300 feet high and wide and 25 kilometers long. Pilots had to stay within the corridor, turn and "blast through the box a second time," without deviating more than 150 feet from level flight, as told by an Air Force essayist in 2005.

Air Force observers clocked his speed at 2,193 mph, flying 100 feet per second faster than a rifle bullet. Air friction heated his cockpit window to more than 622 degrees Fahrenheit at an altitude where the outside temperature was minus 67 degrees.

The record, now more than 30 years old, never has been surpassed.

But it is not only for speed that Joersz is remembered in the Air Force.

He is remembered as a man who adhered to childhood principles and values and for leadership that never ventured into arrogance sometimes associated with high profile fighter pilots.

Joersz's essayist said the pilot's values came from primarily from two men; one, his father, Henry, who worked 14 hours a day at his bakery and was a man of unquestionable integrity, and another, Hazen farmer Victor Karges, who after losing an arm in a threshing machine, still worked long days.

Both men were completely honest and hardworking and Joersz said from them he learned, "Always do the right thing," and "Tell the truth - no matter what."

The essayist described Hazen as the "American postmark for clean, small town living, where God-fearing parents raised their children with strong values."

Besides his assignment with the SR-71 Blackbird surveillance program, Joersz was a decorated fighter pilot from the Vietnam era and a two-time wing commander. He directs business and strategy for Lockheed Martin.

He is returning to Hazen with other family members, said Hazen American Legion Auxiliary member Carol Galvin.