Retired Top Gun Graduate Brings Combat Aviation Lessons to Key West College

A Key West financial planner who watched the original Top Gun film eight times in a single weekend at age 16, then spent a naval career living it, will deliver a lecture at the College of the Florida Keys on April 16.

Commander John Picco (ret.) will present "Top Gun to Combat: Real Training, Real Missions, Real Lessons" at 7 PM in the Tennessee Williams Theatre on CFK's Stock Island campus. Doors open at 6 PM. The 50-minute presentation will be followed by 10 minutes of questions and answers. Tickets are $5 at the door, with free admission for CFK and Monroe County School District students.

The numbers behind Picco's career are formidable: more than 3,000 flight hours, 800 carrier landings, and 80 combat missions flying F/A-18s. He earned the Navy Wings of Gold and graduated from the U.S. Navy Fighter Weapons School, known as TOPGUN, in 2000, the same elite program that fired his imagination as a teenager in 1986.

After retiring from the Navy, Picco settled in Key West, where he now works as a financial planner. He became a recognizable local voice on aviation in 2022 when the release of Top Gun: Maverick brought him to the Florida Keys Weekly Podcast, hosted by Britt Myers, and to an AccuWeather interview in which he praised the sequel's cockpit accuracy, saying the film "really did an amazing job capturing how things work in the cockpit."

CFK's VIP Series, which stands for Views, Ideas, and Perspectives, is now in its 12th season and features speakers with local, regional, and national prominence. The 2026 series is sponsored by David and Annette Curry, Essential Net Solutions, and First Horizon Bank. The 2023 edition concluded with a presentation on 200 years of the U.S. Navy in Key West, reflecting Monroe County's deep institutional relationship with military aviation through Naval Air Station Key West at Boca Chica Field.

Organizers describe the lecture as offering "an unvarnished, inside the cockpit view" of high-stakes decision-making and leadership, with a focus on moments where split-second choices carried real consequences. Picco has previously noted that meteorologists are embedded on aircraft carriers and participate in every phase of mission planning, a detail that maps directly onto the maritime safety realities facing island communities.

The Tennessee Williams Theatre, a 501(c)(3) non-profit operating in partnership with CFK, serves as the Keys' primary performing arts center and draws tens of thousands of attendees each year.