The house Don grew up in Ridgely MD is just a forty mile drive from the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, but while attending Randolph – Macon Academy, a military school, he decided to go for an appointment to the Air Force Academy and we're glad he did. Don spent his first two years in 24th Squadron, then off to the other end of Vandenberg hall in 2nd Squadron. Don did well at the Academy. He was on the Superintendent’s List many of the semesters and Don served on the1st Group Staff during our first class year.

Following graduation, Don was off to Craig AFB AL for pilot training. Don took a C-141 assignment to Norton AFB and immediately volunteered for a tour in SEA. That put him at the front of the Palace Cobra list and the hope was he would get his first choice of aircraft – an F-4. When his HH-53 assignment came in, he wasn’t particularly happy, but it turned out to be a great experience. So off he went to transition to helicopters at Shepherd AFB. The Air Force threw a little wrinkle into things in that the rescue school was transitioning from Hill AFB to Kirtland so there was no place to qualify in the HH-53. Not to be deterred from getting those few pilots into SEA, the Air Force worked a deal with the Marines to have them qualify in Marine CH-53s and then get checked out in country in the HH model and learn the Air Force SAR tactics. One neat sidelight to that was that Don was able to Carrier Qualify with his Marine Unit. Not quite landing a fixed wing on an aircraft carrier, but still a little different than the ground. He was assigned to the 37th Aerospace Rescue and Recovery Squadron (AR&RSq) at DaNang AB, Vietnam. He participated in a number of notable rescue missions to include “Bat 21” and the evacuation of Quang Tri. From an academy standpoint, one that really stands out was the rescue of a "Stormy" F-4E crew that had to eject over the water just off the coast in North Vietnam (actually a little closer to land than expected). It just so happened that the pilot was a '67 grad that Don was with in CS24, Mike Francisco. When he found out who it was, he jokingly told “Cisco” that he was going to put him back down.

Following his SEA tour, Don was assigned to Detachment 15, 39th AR&RSq at Patrick AFB FL. The mission of this unit was to support the Eastern Test Range. One of the highlights of this tour was him being on the Launch Abort Recovery Team for Apollo 17 – the only night time launch for those missions. The night training was intense (before NVGs) for this mission, but the grandeur of seeing that launch front and center was breathtaking. He left Patrick in the summer of 1973 for his Rated Supplement Tour where he served as the Officer's Club Manager with the 436th Air Base Group at Dover AFB DE. Yep – he figured he spent so much time in O-Clubs that he might as well run one. That lasted a year until his boss at Dover (a one star) told him he belonged back in the cockpit. Don wasn’t sure whether he got fired or not, but in any case he returned to the cockpit in C-5s with the 9th MAS at Dover AFB. One of the highlights of that tour was being in command of a C-5 crew participating in an airshow at Templehoff Airport, Berlin, GE that was celebrating the anniversary of the Berlin Airlift. After the weekend static display, Don asked for vectors over the Brandenburg gate at minimum altitude from East to West to reinforce the point that the Air Force was still very capable of another airlift if needed.

He was then off to the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia PA where he earned his MBA in Management Science in 1978. But much more importantly, he met his wife to be, Wendy, who was also a student at Wharton. Then it was off to the Pentagon, where Don served as a Cost Analyst on the DCS Comptroller's staff. Every time he sees a C-17, he thinks about how he was on the ground floor of that development in that he provided all the O&M life cycle costing for the long range plan. It was only a piece of paper in the early 1980s, but look at the capability it has provided the Air Force. He went to ACSC after his Pentagon assignment and was shocked to find out that after a couple of exams, he was at the top of the class. Well that didn't last long, but he still ended up as a Distinguished Graduate. He still needed more flying time to meet the established gates, but was now pretty much entrenched in the "business side" of the Air Force. So with a little help from a pretty senior "friend", he was assigned to the 4950th Test Wing at Wright Patterson AFB where he flew C-141s. The Wing had 4 of the first 5 C-141s ever built. They were all a little different and some unrecognizable as a C-141 with all the modifications made to them. In 1987, Don was assigned to the Electronic Systems Command (ESC) where he served as the Program Manager for Communications Systems Segment Replacement Program - A Cheyenne Mountain program.

After retiring as a Lieutenant Colonel in 1989, Don and Wendy and their two sons (Ryan and Eric) spent the next eighteen years in Massachusetts, where Don continued his career in systems program management with BBN (Bolt, Beranek and Newman) a high-technology company in Cambridge. He worked on supporting the DDN (Defense Data Network) and other government oriented programs. When GTE purchased BBN, he began working on the commercial applications of data networking to include building out a network backbone infrastructure that was a key element of the emerging internet infrastructure. He didn’t invent the internet, but was on the bleeding edge of cobbling together regional networks and moving into the fiber optics generation.

Don joined Raytheon as a Manager of Business Development in Burlington, MA in 2002. In that role, he was the voice of the AF to Raytheon and of Raytheon to the AF in the C4ISR arena. This area was getting a lot of attention as a key component of Network Centric Warfare. It was a great experience during a critical time in our nation’s history.

Looking ahead toward real retirement, Don was searching for a small business near where they intended to live – Moultonboro, NH which is in what is called the Lakes Region of NH. The business needed to meet certain criteria like being seasonal so they could travel during the winter and not be all consuming. An unexpectedopportunity arose in 2005 to buy Surroundings Art Gallery near their vacation home in Moultonboro. Thinking that this kind of opportunity wouldn’t come up again in a small community, he and Wendy jumped in. He has continued to operate the gallery since then as well as teach at Plymouth State University and UMass – Lowell on an adjunct basis. Don and Wendy continue to live in a wonderful home in Moultonboro and are close to their two sons and three grandchildren who live just outside of Boston. Travel and seeing the grandchildren grow are on their agenda in the future.

Always a strong USAFA supporter, Don embraced the "Legacy" concept for the Class of 2018, selecting the first squadron he was in (CS24) to focus on and got his CS24 classmates to participate in the recognition ceremony for the class of 2018. The experience was great and he hopes that the class can find other unique ways to relate to the class of 2018. Hard to believe that 50 years will have gone by since graduation when we see that class throw their hats in the air.

Don and Wendy: Thank-you for sharing

October 2015