Son of famous airman had own remarkable career

[cec]

Son of famous airman had own remarkable career




By Bonnie Henry - Arizona Daily Star
Posted : Sunday Sep 30, 2007 11:55:28 EDT

TUCSON, Ariz. — He’s chatted it up with Charles Lindbergh, served as military adviser to the Shah of Iran and briefed President John F. Kennedy.
Oh, yeah. His dad is the namesake for Vandenberg Air Force Base.
“I’m the son of a pioneer airman who I think is the greatest son-of-a-***** who ever lived,” says Tucson resident Hoyt “Sandy” Vandenberg Jr.
Hoyt Sr. (1899-1954) was a four-star Air Force general, its second chief of staff and the second director of the Central Intelligence Group, forerunner of the Central Intelligence Agency.
He also served as commander of the Ninth Air Force and helped plan the D-Day invasion of Normandy.
The subject of both Time and Life magazine covers, he was described by a Washington newspaper as “impossibly handsome.” Marilyn Monroe reportedly named him one of three people she’d most like to be stranded with on a desert island — along with Joe DiMaggio and Albert Einstein.
In 1958, Cooke Air Force Base on the central coast of California was renamed in the general’s honor.
So how does a son follow that act?
Perhaps by flying 100 combat missions over North Vietnam, “tightening things up” as commandant of cadets at the Air Force Academy and keeping an eye on the Shah of Iran.
“The Shah was collecting these incredible weapon systems,” says Vandenberg, 79, who retired in 1981.
His earliest memories are of Hawaii, where his father was stationed from 1929 to 1931.
“After three years, we all came home on a troop ship.”
From there the family — father; mother, Gladys; sister, Gloria; and young Sandy — lived in a succession of Army Air Corps bases as the senior Vandenberg climbed the ranks.
When Hitler invaded Poland in 1939, Vandenberg’s father was moved to the War Department in Washington, D.C.
“We had a three-bedroom apartment on the top floor,” Vandenberg says. “It was a very atypical military upbringing.”
One Sunday, he was listening to a football game on the radio when the game was interrupted.
“I went in to complain to my father that they kept interrupting that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor.”
Ten days would pass before he saw his father again. Before long, the general would be sent overseas, first to North Africa, then to Europe.
The war was over by the time Sandy Vandenberg enrolled at West Point. He slept in the room that Ulysses S. Grant had once lived in. Future astronaut Buzz Aldrin was a classmate.
Even so, cadets slated for the Air Force got little respect at West Point, says Vandenberg, due to their new blue uniforms.
“The Army called us bus drivers.”
While at West Point, he hitched a ride with his dad to London. On board was Charles Lindbergh.
“We talked quite a while,” Vandenberg says.
In London, he met Sue Johnson, the daughter of Medal of Honor recipient Gen. Leon Johnson.
The young couple married in 1952 and had two sons. Sue died in 2002 of breast cancer.
“We were just married 50 years,” Vandenberg says. Eighteen months ago, he married family friend Anne Addison.
In 1954, Hoyt Vandenberg Sr. died of prostate cancer. By then, his son was serving as a fighter pilot and flight commander in Germany.
Champing at the bit to get in on the action, Vandenberg was sent to Southeast Asia in 1966, where he flew 100 combat missions over North Vietnam, racking up several awards, including the Silver Star and three Distinguished Flying Crosses.
After several stateside assignments, including graduation from the National War College and a stint at the Pentagon, Vandenberg became commandant of cadets in 1973 at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs.
“We had a hell of a time with the honor code,” says Vandenberg, who worked to upgrade a code of ethics.
After leaving the Academy in 1975, he served briefly as military adviser to the Shah of Iran.
“We developed code names for everyone. They had hidden microphones. The Iranians taped everything I said.”
Six months later, he was back at the Pentagon. His last active-duty assignment was in Hawaii as vice commander in chief of Pacific Air Forces.
His resume also lists him as a proud member of the Caterpillar Club, having ejected from an F-86 and an F-105.
His second ejection, over North Carolina, was fairly routine and he managed to land standing up.
But his first ejection, this time in Germany, was a little more hair-raising.
“My helmet blew off and I landed in a tree,” he says, never batting an eyelash.




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