This allowed him to attend the United States Air Force Academy in 1966, but unfortunately a "minor slip-up in his final days dropped him to sixth in his class and out of the running for the fighter assignments."
[6] He attained the rank of Captain before leaving active service and going back into education, while continuing to serve with the Pennsylvania Air National Guard over the following decade.
He built some novel software for the business for financial planning, and while purchasing computer hardware for the company he encountered early video games on the Atari and met Sid Meier, then also employed by General Instrument.
The group were simply packaging floppy disks and printing labels in Stealey's basement, but found economic success quickly.
From the late 1980s Meier began to lose interest in flight simulators, and pushed to have his idea for a pirate game made by the company.
He also ran a competition called I Cheated Death with Major Bill which selected three fans to fly with him on a "stunt-filled flight lesson".
Stealey had believed in a resurgence of the arcade market, which ultimately failed and resulted in his sale of the company to Spectrum HoloByte in 1993.
When the MISL collapsed in the summer of 1992, Stealey stepped in and bought the team which was renamed to Baltimore Spirit and shifted to the NPSL.
The team's record over the following years was consistently poor, and Stealey lost $3 million in the venture before he sold it to Ed Hale in 1998.
In 1987, an engine failure occurred aboard his plane which forced an emergency landing in poor visibility conditions, but he survived the encounter.