Charlotte Observer

Joe Depriest

(HICKORY NC) The old warbird drew them like a magnet.

There was the former Navy pilot who flew the bomber more than 40 years ago over Vietnam. A woman whose father died when the same type of plane he was piloting crashed in combat. The pilot who was in the air with him on the fatal night flight.

For years, scattered across the country, they've shared memories by phone and e-mails.

Now, they're coming together beside the antique plane to put the commander's name on it.

On Oct. 2, more than 50 people will meet at the Hickory Aviation Museum to dedicate the A-7A bomber in memory of David "Scotty" Greiling, who piloted a plane like it when he went down on July 24, 1968.

The other pilot flying an A-7A on the same combat mission - Walt Moser of Gastonia - will be at the ceremony. So will Greiling's daughter, Karen DeBellis, who was eight months old at the time of her father's death.

"I know it's going to be an emotional day," said DeBellis, 42, who lives near Seattle, Wash. "I want to hear more about what kind of guy was dad was. And hear it from his friends."

The plane's presence in Hickory goes back to 1992, when local aviation enthusiasts were starting a museum. The Navy donated an A-7A Corsair II bomber in Memphis, Tenn., and the group trucked it back to Hickory.

Declared surplus in the late 1970s, the plane had been used for training. Museum co-founder Kyle Kirby thinks they got it just in time: The aging aircraft may have been headed to the scrap heap.

A scattered fraternity

One summer day a few years ago, Miami lawyer Joel Eaton landed his Cessna at the Hickory Municipal Airport, a regular stop on vacations to Beech Mountain.

Then he saw it from the corner of his eye: an A-7A like he'd piloted on 150 combat missions in Vietnam. He climbed inside.

Checking the serial number, along with logbooks, Eaton confirmed he'd actually flown the plane parked in Hickory.

"I didn't think I'd ever sit in one again," Eaton said. "It brought back a lot of memories."

He remembered his friend Scotty Greiling, a lieutenant commander from Hillsdale, Mich. Together, they'd flown a brand new state-of-the-art aircraft in a long-ago war.

He spread word about the plane to the scattered fraternity of pilots.

Among those who came to see it was Moser. He recalled the night he took off from the aircraft carrier USS America, flying two miles behind Greiling over the mountains of North Vietnam.

"Scotty was a very good pilot," said Moser, 66. "He was always consistent, predictable."

The target that night was military trucks.

Moser heard Greiling announce over the radio: "I'm rolling in."

As Moser dropped his bombs, he spotted an explosion off to the side, away from the trucks.

Greiling had crashed - and the image stuck with Moser.

The war went on, he kept flying, and served a second Vietnam tour. Civilian life rushed by. But he never forgot Greiling - wondering what happened to his wife and baby girl.

'A difficult subject'

"Where's your daddy?" playmates used to ask Karen DeBellis when she was growing up in Monterey, Calif.

"He died in a plane crash in the war," she told them.

DeBellis was 5 when her mother remarried. She loved her new stepfather, who was also a Navy aviator. She tried to leave the past alone.

But as she got older she wanted to know more about her father - the man in the old photos she treasured. Details surfaced - from the Pentagon, specifics about the 1968 crash and explosion. It was all so "ugly and tragic," DeBellis said.

The urge to surf the Internet for clues about her dad's fellow pilots tugged at her in her 20s, but "I didn't want to open the floodgate for people I didn't know."

While she craved more information, it was a "difficult subject....a little too painful."

DeBellis' husband, Jay, was a Navy commander who respected Vietnam-era aviators, particularly attack pilots. He found the Hickory Aviation Museum website, which connected his wife to Moser about two years ago.

She had a long and tearful talk with him on the phone.

DeBellis will travel to Hickory with her son, Alexander, and her father's brother and sister. She wants to pay her respects to pilots who shared the same joys and dangers with her father.

His name is on the Vietnam Wall and in Arlington Cemetery on the back of the gravestone for his 3-day-old daughter who died in 1966. Now, his name is going up on a warbird.

"I'm thrilled and honored," DeBellis said. "It will be therapeutic for everyone."

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