David F. Nefzger

(Okay, "Bingo" to you guys.)

I was born 24 January 1945 in General Robin Olds and Dave Forest Park, Illinois-that's a suburb of Chicago within site of the skyline. My parents moved to Brookfield, home of the Chicago Zoological Park when I was in kindergarten. I really must dispute my Father's claim that the family acquired me at the Zoo's Monkey Island. I did work at the Zoo in grade school, though; I was an assistant lion tamer. Okay, since it's you guys, I was really a bus boy at the Zoo's restaurant, but that can be dangerous work, too, you know.

I went to Lyons Township High School and the University of Illinois in Urbana. After graduation in 1967 from the U of I and ROTC commissioning, I set off for Del Rio, Texas. Steve Hoffmann and I joke that our thoughts coming through the front gate at DLF were "I'm a college graduate; how tough can pilot training be?" We found out. Tough enough.

As we all know, pilot training was both tough and exhilarating. It hurt when we said goodbye to our colleagues who were terminated, and it was a stressful time for those of us who persisted. But it was also a time when we made some great friends and had a lot of laughs together. You really learn about a guy's true character when you see him through good times and bad.

I ran into Brig Gen Robin Olds--the fighter pilot we all worshipped back in the day--at the Air & Space Museum in 2005 (photo is above), a couple of years before his death. I told him about the ride I gave him from Andrews AFB to Wight-Patterson around 1971. He sat up front in the jump seat and chatted with the flight crew during much of the trip. No, he didn't recall that flight. He didn't really say this either, but it could have happened!

Luttie Bingo & Steve, Roomies It was in January 1968 at the O-Club when I showed several of my 69-03 class mates a Valentine's Day card I was sending to a girl back in Illinois. It was a picture of a gorilla who had signed his name "Bingo." (I signed Dave under it.) The card got lots of laughs that day, but at that point Steve Sohn christened me "Bingo," and from then on even some of our IPs called me "Lt Bingo" in lieu of the hard-to-pronounce "Nefzger." Part of the durability of "Bingo" for us was that it also has an aviation meaning: I'm out of fuel and need to return to base; that probably described me at the end of more than one night of socializing. It certainly does now!

After pilot training, I went to Vietnam in the O-2B, commonly known as the "bullshit bomber" in SEA. The O-2B was a Cessna Super Skymaster that had been fitted with a chute for dropping leaflets and a loudspeaker where the cargo door had been. Army PSYOPS made the leaflets and recorded the messages, and the Air Force delivered them. Except for VC shooting at us in the air (to get some quiet and discourage littering?) and shooting rockets and mortars at us at night, the flying was great. ["Except for the killings, crime in Washington is way down."--Mayor Marion Berry] The guy in charge of PSYOPS in I Corps was Col Bill Barber, a truly great man who won the Medal of Honor in the Korean War. Snake School Bingo One time I flew him down to Chu Lai from DaNang for lunch with another Medal of Honor winner from Korea, an Army colonel with the Americal Division. They had never met. Listening to those guys talk was thrilling and an honor. A few weeks later, I thought it'd be funny to circle over the Americal Division's PSYOPS detachment at HQs and use my O-2's loud speaker to send a message to the Army PSYOPS guy I worked with there, LT Frank Orth. So I got on the speaker and blasted in my best Bill Cosby imitation, "LT Orth, LT Orth, I TOLD you to build an ARK!" A couple of hours later when I was back at DaNang, LT Orth called me and said they'd all had a good laugh until the Commanding General had called him and asked if he could get that Air Force idiot to please shut up! Maj Colin Powell was the Executive Officer to the Assistant Chief of Staff for OPS then, but I don't know if he heard my voice that day or not. Seems like everyone else did, unfortunately.

After Vietnam, I flirted with the F-100 for a while but jumped at the chance to leave that (and forego another SEA tour) and go into C-141s. I was assigned to Dover AFB and roomed there with Steve Hoffmann-together again. You might recall that Steve Hoffmann, Steve Sohn, Joel While, Roger Lutterman, and I had been roomies at Laughlin. Steve earned my eternal gratitude by introducing me to my wife, Eve. And the day I met her was the same day Steve Hoffmann delivered me to the Greyhound Bus for a trip to New York to visit with Steve Sohn and his family over Thanksgiving. I'll never forget their hospitality and kindness to me.

Marrying Eve has been the best thing that's ever happened to me, and we've had and are still having a great Bingo in C-141 life. While at Dover, I flew lots of missions back into Vietnam, once even succeeding in that magical objective of landing just before midnight on the last day of the month and taking off on the first day of the next month-2 months of combat pay in one sortie! My grueling line check upgrade to Aircraft Commander was back to SEA, too. The grueling part was that my check pilot was being evaluated by the Chief of Dover's Stan/Eval at the same time. Imagine a 7-day check ride with two Stan/Eval toads! I passed, but sweat it the whole time. Among our missions in the 20th MAS were Presidential support (Nixon in my case) flights, usually moving his armored limonene somewhere. Once I carried Nixon's dogs, Pasha and King Timahoe, to Homestead-they were probably the highest ranking VIPs I ever carried! Another time we had Brig Gen Robin Olds on board-he was then the Director of Air Force Flight Safety. He sat in the jump seat and chatted with my co-pilot and me. Ever the fighter pilot, he said how grateful he was that there were guys who wanted to fly crap like this C-141 so he and others could stick to fighters. Not the most gracious thing to say to the guy giving him a free ride. I ran into him a while before his death and reminded him of our Bingo & Steve flight. No, he didn't recall it.

After the C-141, the Air Force sent me to graduate school at Florida State University where I got a MA in Asian Studies in preparation for my tour in Hawaii at PACAF HQs as an intelligence officer. After three great years there, I spent my last active duty year as a Senior Controller in the SAC-MAC Joint Command Post at Altus AFB, Oklahoma. (Altus was MAC's training facility and also hosted some SAC tankers.)

I then went in to the Air Force Reserves and to work as a civilian in Washington, DC, for the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). I didn't fly in the reserves-did intel work instead. I had a variety of reserve assignments, the last on the faculty of the Joint Military Intelligence College (now the National Defense Intelligence University) at Bolling AFB. After almost 31 years of military service, I retired as an O-6 in 1998. As a civilian at DIA, I worked on the Joint Staff in the J2 office when Colin Powell was the Chairman and then later in the collection planning area. I retired from the federal government in 2000 and worked for The Aerospace Corporation supporting the National Reconnaissance Office (spy satellites) until May of 2007. Since then, fully retired. Loving every minute!

Eve and I live in Burke, Virginia, a Washington, DC, suburb. We've . been keeping busy with travel, a bit of home re-modeling, and volunteer work at our church also worked at John McCain's national campaign HQs during the primaries -- phone calls and signatures so he could be on the VA ballot. I still think he's a great man but he ran a poor campaign after the nomination. Our only child, Kristin, is a teacher now in Fairfax County, is married, and lives nearby.