We lost our dad Victor Fredrick John, last month. Sometime in the night of the 25th of October dad breathed his last breath. I am very thankful that I had finally been able to visit him on that day. He had actually been in the area since Saturday, having flown in from Oregon with my brother. Ill health had kept him in Oregon, and unable to follow my mother to their new home, where she had been for a few weeks.

It wasn’t until I was able to visit him Wednesday that I saw how badly off he was.

He was a force to be reckoned with during his life. (Being 6’4″ didn’t hurt either.)

He was born on December 7, 1935 in Gillett, Wisconsin. He died at the age of 87. He is and will continue to be greatly missed.

Below is a bio he wrote himself for a Military reunion book in 1996/1997.)

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Every once in a while I have a flash back and recall that a long, long time ago in a land far, far away I had some connection with an organization that was associated with the military establishment. Since I have left that clouded world and collected my due severance’s for longer than I was there, I do upon occasion need contact from that past, either spiritual or otherwise, to remind me how the money gets into my checking account faithfully each and every month, year after year.

I still don’t know what happened in that room back in 1956 when someone said, “the next sixteen people on the list will be retained as Instructors in Harlingen”. I would not have landed in Harlingen for five years if I had stayed off that category one sign-up list. But all in all it was a decent tour and I met some lasting friends. Unfortunately two of my good friends Atis lielmantis, my roommate for over two years and Ted Nura, my skin diving partner, were later killed in Viet Nam.

I thought that the closing of Harlingen was my salvation, but then they cancelled my assignment as a Missile Launch Officer to Bitberg, Germany and sent me to SAGE is ADC. It was then I knew that all my credits, markers, chits, and hard work had added up to “Just fill the squares and get these guys out of here”, Also turning down Regular while at Harlingen was something I was to later regret. Maybe I should have discussed in more detail with my supervisor this concept of being a Regular guy in the USAF. I also sometimes look back at the turning down of my appointment to the first class at the Air Force Academy. Can you believe it came from Sen. Joe McCathy, the anti-Christ of Communism from Wisconsin. My dad died prior to my entering the Service and he was a state employee, thereupon the appointment. First graduate from the Academy and with my year of commissioned service, the ranking officer. WOW – if I could just be young and foolish one more time.

After Weapons Controller Training at Eglin AFB I found myself in Topshan AFS Maine. OK, I’ll tell you generally where it’s at, not too far southwest of Newfoundland or somewhere around there. If you really want to know where it is, ask D.R. Willis. He must have insulted the same guy I did because he went there too. In Maine summer was part of June and most of July, fall was six weeks long the rest was winter. Can you picture Willis in his parka standing in a snow bank slaving over his Weber grill with snow blowing around and barbecuing chicken in January. BELIEVE IT! Yvonne had said, “No D.R., you’re not going to grill chicken in the house.”

We had to get our flying pay by flying in P2V’s with the Navy. Flying in the EC-121 later was a breeze after flying in these puppies. After flying long five hour mission at Harlingen I was in for a surprise when my first mission in a P2V was 19 hours. I thought the world had come to an end. I watched the sun go down and come up again and we still had eight ours to go. An airplane with props and jets. I guess they couldn’t decide what they wanted it to be. But on the up side we did carry a cook on board who actually cooked all three of our meals.

The crews were real glad to see us navigators because now they could go out on patrol and actually know where they were. Normal procedure for returning home was to head west, drop low under US radar and once in a while pop up to see if their radar could tell them how far they were out from land, then when they recognized the coastline they would either turn right or left and fly a landfall until they got back to Brunswick NAS. In the navy you can revise your flight plan up to three minutes before your IP.

The one good thing about this assignment was that I met my wife to be. She was in Ramstein, Munich and Wiesbaden for over four years with her folks, prior to her stateside return. Her dad was in TAC EVAL in Germany and returned to serve as the Electronics/Communications Officer at the SAGE Division HQs at Topshan AFS. We met at a dance at the Officers Club. I was married in Maine and the Air Force sent me remote to Alaska as a wedding gift. I did have a two month old as the first addition to my family before I was sent to the boonies.

I remember meeting Gorden Schieman at a bar in Seattle while on my way to Alaska. He was drowning his sorrows and was also on his way to Alaska with the JAG office at Elmendorf AFB. But for me, out to Middleton Island AFS in the Gulf of Alaska as a Operations Officer/Weapons Controller. Two miles long one-half mile wide, three trees (the Middleton Island National Forest), sixty-seven hairy legged men and 2000 rabbits.

After seven months they closed up the site and shipped all the equipment to a place I never heard of called Can Tuo, Viet Nam. So the rest of my stint was spent on Fire Island AFS, Alaska in the Bay of Anchorage where you could see the lights of the International AP at night and normally spent Friday happy hour at the Officers club at Elmendorf, AFB. We took the General out to shoot his moose, held it for him so he wouldn’t miss, raided salmon from the fisherman’s nets and drank until we got the short timer ribbon given to the guy with the least days to go before rotation. At Fire Island I was the Dispatch and Recovery Officer, so worked three hours in the morning and three hours in the afternoon on a regular five day schedule. I was also in charge of the chow hall and officers lounges – both jobs had their benefits.

After a pretty decent quick remote assignment I was sent to McClellan AFB in Sacrament, California attached to the 552 AEW&C Wing. By this time it was 1962 and the Viet Nam War was scaling up. The Wing started to send crews over to Viet Nam on four month rotations and I joined that crowd. After one tour over there I was sent back as the Radar Staff Officer and spent a year on staff in Saigon, Ubon, Udorn, and Korat. They just kept moving us around every few months. I still can’t figure it out, were we just not wanted or was our mission so secret they had to keep us on the move.  It’s interesting when I think back — the first American soldiers were sent to Viet Nam in 1955 the same year I entered the service and the last Americans left in 1975 the year I left the service.

I looked at Viet Nam as the place to go because I had been trained to go there. I did not have time for indifference, this was my job and I was confident I would do it well. I did have the opportunity to meet and know some very interesting people – BG Benjamin O. Davis the first black Air Force General and a tremendous individual, Col. Robin Olds – 4 proven kills and I saw gun films of several missile malfunction misses that would of made him an Ace, and Col. ‘Chappie’ James (we all called Olds and James the dynamic duo ‘Blackman and Robin’) Col. Pete Knutty – my boss in Nam and later my boss again in Florida, and last but not least, three fingered Jack Ryan who said to me once “Hi Vic, glad to see you on this mission with me.” Needless to say the crew was very impressed (not knowing I had briefed him several times before) I like those Generals that remember names.

As an individual and someone who liked their job, the training and preparation would have been lost if I had not had this experience in Viet Nam. My father-in-law spent 28 years flying jets in the Air Force and never got to the opportunity to get into the real thing – to this day he regrets it and respects me for my commitment. It was my fulfillment in my career, but unfortunately not for those I know who did not come back or the ones who came back under adverse circumstances. I was proud to be in the “BIG EYE” Task Force. Our unit received two Presidential Unit Citations and the “V” for valor. I flew 118 missions and loaded up an Air Medal along with the accompanying standard package. Looked good on the USAF Uniform or Mess Dress at any occasions. A proud Unit to have served in.

I had a new addition to my family in California and enjoyed the tour. While not in Nam I flew the line, I was the Assistant Wing Training Officer and the Wing Disaster Preparedness Officer – both very interesting jobs.

I also had the good fortune to qualify for a special task group which flew missions for two years with the Atomic Energy Commission Contingent from Sandia, NM. We flew out of Kirkland AFB, NM and Hawaii, the deployment base for the Johnson Island drop site. The EC-121 crews controlled the complete aircraft array for atomic test drops made at selected locations over the ocean. We deployed once from each site each year – great experience and deployment especially the six week in Hawaii. Blue ascots and orange flight suits with special hats – God were were a sharp group. Those monkeys with their heads taped to the window got a hell of a view- sorry AAPCA.

I enjoyed flying and spending time in San Francisco and Lake Tahoe. Since life is over after you spent a full tour in Viet Nam it was my turn to move on, so-off to McCoy AFB in Orland, Florida. Once you get that ADC brand on your forehead you just wear it forever. (Sidebar: I have since had it surgically removed.)

Can you believe I was sent to Florida as a Navigator? Talk about a massive retraining project in the works – what a boring job after Viet Nam. Screwing holes through the sky in a EC-121 off the coast of Cuba was not much fun. It was also during that time that I began to realize that you could get killed flying those piles of junk. We caged so many engines on missions we might as well have been flying three engine planes. This really started to take the fun out of flying and I was not enjoy it one bit. I had a family to think about and I was still in my mid-thirties.

I spent four years at McCoy AFB with plenty of time to add one more to the family. That was it for us; time to try to have some fun. The only problem with that was that the SAC wives that had husbands on deployment keep hanging around the house. I boot-strapped my Collage degree, my one salvation from this tour. I took the family to the opening of Disneyland in Orlando and life was over for the kids. Since I was enjoying flying less and less I called personnel at Colorado Springs and told them they had an opportunity to save a life – “If you don’t get me out of here I am going to kill myself.” They took pity on me and offered me a one year remote hilltop in Korea or a two year accompanied tour in the Philippines. So off to Manila as a liaison officer with the Philippine Air Force attached to the American Embassy in Manila and working for the 13th Air Force in Clark. Of course there is always a down side to these paradises. Six months of heat and six months of rain. Most of our work consisted of planning Joint Allied exercises with the USAF, USN and Philippines AF and training Philippine officers and NCO’s at their division Headquarters.

We had Marshall Law, Typhoons, and Amelia Marcos with her 2000 pair of shoes. There were very relaxing times at the US resort in the mountains at Baguio a varied array of experiences for the family. Clark AFB was 70 miles away and no one bothered us much in Manila. It was a good tour. My one shining moment was when I left I was presented with the Philippine Weapons Controller Badge and received approval from the US Air Force to wear is on my uniform over my right pocket. This was the first time that this honor was ever extended to anyone outside the Philippine Air Force. I received it for my work as Secretary of the Joint Allied Air Defense Working Group.

My last assignment was an exit assignment to Duluth AFB in Minnesota. I went there because it was close to central Wisconsin where I planned to retire. The Duluth tour was as a Senior Director in SAGE, ADC. I did have the opportunity to get some graduate work done on my MBA. A year goes fast in the perpetual winter climate of Minnesota. Then out to greet the new world of civilian life.

So what is the Navigator/Weapons Controller going to do in civilian life. I could find no work in this field in central Wisconsin. My 15 minute career out briefing was really paying off at this point. I just relaxed and thought something would just appear out of nowhere. When you retire at half pay it’s really one-third pay, that doesn’t take care of a family of five. Well, I spent a year waiting around and then said to the wife, “We’ve tried poverty for year now, what do you think of it?” she said, “I don’t really care for it”, so I started to look for work in earnest. My degree in business was put to use as an Executive Office for the local board of realtors, cost accountant for an architectural/construction company and later as a real estate broker. The money wasn’t rolling in, I still could not find my niche.

We lived in the country on ten acres of beautiful woods and did the country thing. I had 35 sheep (over 100 when the lambs came in); an angora goat named Dwight H. Pipestone; two pigs to raise each year, bartered from my neighbor for rent on my 110 sugar maple trees; a black Angus named Sir Loin, who was replaced on an 18 month basis; 50 chickens for the freezer and chickens for egg production; and a large garden. This enterprise was a matter of survival. You remember about the food thing, teenagers never pass the refrigerator without opening the door. Cut over five cords of fire wood each year and continued to finish building my house in the trees. Sue had a spinning and weaving studio/shop in the house and was starting to build her business. Who said living poor isn’t fun.

While sitting at my desk in the real estate office one day with nothing to do, which seemed to be the extent of my activity. I calculated, with lunch and gas to work, it was costing me about $.65 per hour to go to work and I wasn’t clearing that much. So enter the GI bill and off to graduate school again. Two years later and I was back unemployed. My graduate work in Natural Resource Management at the University of Wisconsin did not help. The one redeeming factor was that GI bill also helped Sue finish her degree in Communications.

Well just before going back to school I had had a mild heart attack and my hair turned gray in six months. Well at least I still had it. Looking for work after school exhausting. I had grown older and the world was staying young. There was so much younger talent out there looking for work. I was beginning to see the impact of job-discrimination in the market place.

But, what goes around comes around. During the farm crisis in the early 1980s I worked as a volunteer with the farm advocate group connected to the State Department of Agriculture. We helped farmers having debt troubles. It was a real heartrending experience with few successes for the farmers. In the latter part of 1986 I obtained a job with the Farm Credit Bank of St. Paul in their Risk Management Division – Special Accounts Unit. Being in a unit again was fun, sounded like the military. The Bank was also beginning to feel the pinch of farm  failures. After a year and a half I took a better position with the Farm Credit Bank of Louisville working in southwestern Ohio. By 1992 the crisis situation was winding down and the fun and excitement of bankruptcy, foreclosure, and debt restructuring was gone, So instead of transferring to the Regular Accounts Division I decided to retire again. I had had an operation for colon cancer and it was time to take a rest. The radiation and chemo were tough but I still had my hair, D.R.

Currently I have my own Farm Management Consultant Firm. I am the Chairman of the Board, CEO, President and only employee. Its great being your own boss. If you want a pay raise you just give it to yourself. If you don’t want to work for a while you tell future clients you’re tied up. Also its easy being a consultant because you are considered an expert in your field as long as you are over 20 miles from home. I still work in the financial end with the State Department of Agriculture Farm Center as a representative Farm Financial Credit Advisor. I work mostly with farmers preparing to go into mediation with creditors. I am also a State Farm Mediator for the Farm Center. I just left the Wisconsin Rural Development Center where I was on the Board of Directors. As a volunteer group we worked on rural farm problems. I am still working on a National Committee, at the state level, for an organization called ‘Pathways from Poverty’. This group focuses on regional and local issues on rural poverty throughout the nation.

I live in Mineral Point, a small town of 2500 people in southwest Wisconsin. It’s just 50 minutes from Madison the state capital. The University of Wisconsin is also there. Madison was chosen by People Magazine as their 1996 and 1997 “The best city to live in, in America.” You must remember Wisconsin, the Packers, the Badgers. They win something big every twenty or thirty years.

It’s like the suburbs out here in small town USA without the hassle or those ugly shopping centers and strip malls. My children are out of college and seeing what the real world is like. Sue and I did a good job. The kids are as well adjusted as they can be, considering their parents, and ready for the world of experience. Let’s just hope they make less mistakes than us.

My oldest is married and living in Appleton, Wisconsin. She works for a printing company and her mate is head of Production Central at HAYES Manufacturing, Container Division (they make paper cylinders – (Kraft cheese, Pringles, etc.) My son is project analyst for Kaiser Permanente (Kaiser Hospitals) In Portland, OR, and his wife is a freelance publicist. Our youngest is at her new job as Director of Technical Services at Utica College Library in Utica, NY. Our one grandchild at 4 years old is my son’s addition on our side of the family. My eldest daughter has just decided to have grand kitties and grand puppies.

My wife Sue has her art gallery/studio downtown in Mineral Point – it’s called “Studio on High” and of course it’s situated on High Street. She continues to weave and operate the gallery. We have the oldest commercial stone building in town, built in 1847. I know you people on the east coast consider that a new building. Mineral Point is a historical lead and zinc mining town and has more historical buildings than any town or city in Wisconsin. Over 28 artists live and work here year-round. Many have working studios open to the public. Sue has many local artists work in her gallery.

As the potato farmer said to his crop “I’ll dig you later” Cheers – It will be good to hear from all of you – I look forward to it. –Vic

This is by no means dad’s whole life in this short bio. That would take a lot longer to write and put together. But at least we have this nice bit that he wrote himself.