From humble beginnings to taking part in history

This week I'd like to share a bit of the wonderful life that I've been privileged to lead.  Fresh from high school I was enrolled in the brand new Air Force Academy. Our first class was a little unique in that a large percentage of the students had prior college experience. There were only 306 of us, representing every state in the union plus a few from the territories of the time including Hawaii, Alaska and the Panama Canal Zone. The class was small enough that I was able to know and call friend every one of the 207 of us that graduated in 1959.

One friend, a Robert S. Delligatti, came from West Virginia. Del had already played two years of college football.  Scholarships, football and academic were the way he chose to escape the coal miner cycle of the impoverished community where he grew up. It was a great awakening for me at the time to realize that anybody would not want to return to the good life of the area where they were raised much less come  back home to retire as I have done. Del played football at the Academy: a big guy he was a tackle.  USAFA was undefeated in our senior year, the first time we competed at college level, concluding with a tie in the Cotton bowl.

Following graduation most of us went off to Air Force Pilot training. In about 1963 I was flying SAC tankers out of Cape Cod and we hurricane evacuated to Columbus, Ohio.  We bedded down our KC-97 tanker and repaired to the Officers Club for lunch. There I found Lt.s Delligatti and Gene Vosika, a fellow grad from Nebraska. Both were copilots on B-47s and had just gotten off alert that morning. Del had been to the commissary to stock up on groceries before going home to his wife Karen and two young   daughters. Gregarious Del was happy to see me plus a whole host of new faces come to his base for refuge and it became party time. I know not when Del left the club but I do know that the ice cream in his back seat had plenty of time to melt before he even started for home.

Next I heard of Del was when he was teaching ground school in the FB-111 program. His students loved his "war stories" and his clear explanation of "If you move this switch, then this happens on the airplane." Clear, simple and succinct. 

The last time I crossed paths with Del was a recent class reunion. He looked gaunt and the sparkle had gone from his eyes. He died in December last year and lies in repose with Karen on a green slope of Arlington National Cemetery overlooking the Potomac River and the Pentagon a place where he had been stationed three separate times. He never moved back to West Virginia but forever will be not too far away.

Reading his obituary, I learned that Del, a major, had been in Saigon in 1974, He was in charge of an operation that hauled rice to sustain Phnom Penh until the evacuation. Then, as the political climate deteriorated, he volunteered to assist with the inevitable evacuation of Saigon and was involved with Operation Baby Lift, the evacuation of war orphans from South Vietnam. Del functioned as the airfield commander, ensuring evacuation aircraft flowed smoothly and refugees were transported safely. Del himself evacuated via helicopter from the U.S. Defense Attaché compound adjacent to Saigon's Tan Son Nhut airfield to the aircraft carrier USS Midway on April 30, 1975. As a direct result of his efforts, hundreds of Vietnamese refugees were afforded a new life in the U.S.

I came home to farm in 1980. Del stayed in the Air Force and retired as a Major General (2 star) in 1994. He then dedicated his life as caregiver to Karen who was battling cancer. She died in 2002 and Del never handled it well. I lost a true and loyal friend when he went on to join his beloved wife last December. We were two young men from humble beginnings who crossed paths, became friends, and each in our own way made a small footnote in history. Isn't America a wonderful country?

That is the way I see it.   Dick Trail

(Parts taken "Checkpoints", the USAFA Alumni Magazine)