I
was born 24 January 1945 in 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 at Brookfield" 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.
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.
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
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
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.