Air Force flyer simply could not sit still, became Del Rio civic leader

November 8, 2007
By Bill Sontag
Feature Writer

Del Rio’s quiet neighborhoods and comfortable homes conceal men and women with stirring, inspiring stories, further hushed by reserve of the tellers. 

Few who know him have ever put Dan Burr and shyness in the same sentence, but the full telling of his public service has been nonetheless muted.  Perhaps it’s because the long, ropy story of his accomplishments and love of country would seem immodest.  Burr’s 73 years have been that full.

Daniel Stanley Burr was born in Muskegon, Mich. in 1934, the year that Hitler and Mussolini began plotting dire futures for Europe and the world, when FBI agents shot and killed John Dillinger, Sophia Loren was born, and Cole Porter penned “Anything Goes.”  

Burr ended a distinguished Air Force career in Del Rio in 1976, departed to retire in Florida, thought better of it and came back to stay.  “We decided we didn’t like Florida.  It was too damned crowded.  Long lines.  Too many people.  Too much traffic,” Burr said, Friday (Oct. 19), implying all the things he liked then and appreciates now in Del Rio.  The decision came on the heels of 21 years and six months as an Air Force pilot, commanding aircraft through two stressful periods of U.S. aeronautical history, the Cold War and Vietnam.

Stanley C. Burr was a milkman, and his son, Dan helped him with deliveries, especially on weekends.  “Pretty humble stuff, but he kept a family with four kids fed,” Burr said, recalling a fairly pedestrian childhood on the shores of Lake Michigan.  “I used to go boat fishing by myself on the lake, and many others around the state. … But I also remember winters with snow piled so deep around the house that the doors wouldn’t open.”

A few years after high school, Burr enrolled in the engineering program at Muskegon Community College, and found it “incredibly dry and dreadfully boring!”  He recalls going back to his quarters to study, profoundly distracted from the sheer tedium of measuring the tensile strength of string.  “I’d much rather have been chasing girls,” Burr quipped.  So, in 1955, boredom chased him – out of school and into the U.S. Air Force.

Burr enrolled in the Aviation Cadet Program at College Station and Bryan Air Force Base, Texas, and after 14 months of rigorous, physical basic training, he received training in the T-28 “Trojan” trainer and the T-34 “Mentor” was commissioned, and 2nd Lt. Burr was off to fighter aircraft training in the F-89 “Scorpion” at Moody Air Force Base, Ga.  “This was an Air Defense Command, twin-engine fighter and the first to carry a rocket with a nuclear warhead,” Burr said.

Next, Burr was trained and assigned to fly the RC-121 “Super Constellation,” a Cold War reconnaissance aircraft that few Americans knew about.  While business executives flew around the country in the familiar “triple tail” Constellation, the Air Force model was rigged out with surveillance and reconnaissance technologies designed to provide superior communications and reliable information about approaching crafts.  It was the predecessor of the modern AWACS (Airborne Warning and Control System) aircraft in use today.

The “Connie,” as the Constellation was affectionately called, had a radar range of 250 miles, and for three decades it served as an aerial “coast watcher” on both the Atlantic and Pacific shorelines, according to Burr.  “During that period, there were always two of them in the air, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year,” Burr said.  “They were always on the lookout for the assault bombers that never came.” 

Burr was aircraft commander in the “Connie,” with a load of 23 people, only eight of whom were aircraft crew members.  The remainder were surveillance technicians, and the flights were commonly 22 or 23 hours in duration.  “We lived on the damned things,” Burr said.  “We had latrines and a kitchen where we ‘cooked’ foil-pack meals.  But it was just so terribly boring:  The constant drone of those engines, and looking at nothing but water, and usually flying where we had maximum radar advantage of 15,000 to 20,000 feet.”

During the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, American U-2 high-altitude reconnaissance jets were flying above the island nation to identify missile installations developed by the Soviets.  The U-2s flew high enough to dodge most attacks, but a few were brought down, and the “Connies” went along to keep track of them and would-be attackers.  Again, Burr commanded one of the “Connies” from McCoy Air Force Base, Orlando, Fla., with a uniquely different posture.  Instead of flying high, to obtain maximum radar bounce to and from the U-2s, the RC-121s were navigated as steadily as possible only 20 or 30 feet above the oceanic waves.

When an ocean liner or oil tanker was spotted, Burr had to gently lift his aircraft above the bridge and mast to avoid collision, sometimes banking left or right, carefully avoiding the catastrophe of putting a wingtip into the water.  “When we could just pass them, we were usually lower than their top deck,” Burr said, chuckling at the remembrance.  

Naturally, the “Connies” were vulnerable to enemy aircraft, but only rarely attacked.  Burr recalls one incident, heard during radio traffic when a southern pilot squawked about a pair of Soviet MiG21 fighters making passes just in front of his nose:  “Damn, I hope that’s the ‘Bama National Guard, but I don’t think it is!”

“I was always looking for a faster plane to fly, and to learn how to deliver new kinds of ordinance,” Burr said.  In 1966, he got his chance when a call went out from the Tactical Air Command for volunteers to be trained to fly F-4 “Phantoms” in Vietnam.  The F-4 was a supersonic, long-range fighter/bomber capable of delivering conventional bombs, heat-seeking “Sidewinder” missiles, radar-guided missiles, and firing a 20 mm cannon.

“It was designed for air supremacy, had a two-man crew and could carry nuclear bombs, if necessary.  It was used by the Navy for fleet defense,” Burr said.  “The loss rate was very high, so I volunteered with about 16 other guys.”  And asked why, under that circumstance, Burr shot back, “Man, I knew it was going to be the only war in my lifetime, and I didn’t want to get left out!”

After five months of F-4 training at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Tucson, Ariz., Burr was posted to Da Nang Air Base, South Vietnam.  Living conditions were worse than Spartan.  “We had concrete barracks built by the French before they were thrown out of South Vietnam.  The infrastructure was all broken down.  No glass in windows, screens were torn, and there were open-bay latrines with a dozen toilets, but only two or three worked at any given time. 

“There were no showers, and I wore the same flying suit and underwear for months.  There was no laundry.  It was primitive, hot, and stinky.  The water system was so bad that when we went to the chow hall, the water often came out brown, so we had folks back in the States send us Kool Aid, and, with that, some of the smell went away and the color improved.  Da Nang was no palace.  So, when the North Vietnamese took over there, I thought to myself, ‘Welcome to it you son-of-a-bitch.  You deserve it,’” Burr said.

Burr flew from Da Nang to targets in North Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and South Vietnam for six months, April through October 1967.  He completed 138 missions.  “But to get to the 100 missions that was our maximum before we were rotated out, I flew them all over North Vietnam.  Those were the only ones that counted,” Burr explained.  His targets were varied.  “A lot of them were ‘armed reccy’ [armed reconnaissance] missions where we’d just try to find something of the enemy’s and break it or kill it.  But others were for protecting troops on the ground by roughing up the bad guys,” Burr said. 

Most of Burr’s sorties were strike bombings, including 16 or more jets, screaming toward, identifying and destroying pre-assigned targets, usually over enemy territory, which was basically everywhere in Southeast Asia then.  His aircraft was never hit by enemy fire, but plenty of his mission comrades’ were, others were saved by Burr’s skilled flying and countermeasures.  “I was really lucky,” Burr recalled.  When I arrived at my squadron at Da Nang, we had 30 F-4C crews, and when I left in October, 1967 we were down to eighteen, and most of those were crew losses.”

Despite his own good fortune, Burr earned a dozen Air Medal citations, and three Distinguished Flying Cross (DFC) medals.  His first citation for the DFC, stated “…Captain Burr penetrated North Vietnam’s defenses to interdict a key rail yard.  Undaunted by the hostile environment in which the target was located, he delivered his ordnance with precision, destroying one locomotive and twenty boxcars.  The result of this single mission was to weaken the rail network in North Vietnam.”  As with most write-ups, this is fairly dry vernacular of the day.  Another DFC citation mentions targets destroyed, including “a railroad bridge, an anti-aircraft site, and a construction building while encountering accurate, intense 37/57mm firing from two anti-aircraft sites.”

Burr was assaulted on occasion, but, as he recalled, he was fortunate.  “I had SAMs [surface-to-air missiles] come within a hundred yards of my jet at times, three of them on one day, and fortunately all three failed to detonate,” Burr said. Sadly, though he still has the yellowing certificates and onion-skin documents proving his commendations, the medals were swept away in Del Rio’s tragic Flood of 1998 when he lived on low-lying Elizabeth Drive. 

After his Vietnam tour, Burr’s combat skills were turned to training new F-4 pilots at McDill Air Force Base, Fla., and at Seymour-Johnson Air Force Base, N.C., where he served with distinction on the staff of Admiral Jack M. James, commander, Carrier Division Two, Department of the Navy. 

“Then I decided I wanted to do something entirely different with my life.  I wanted to get into air traffic control,” said Burr.  Six months of training at Keesler Air Force Base, Miss., prepared Maj. Burr for his next assignment, Laughlin Air Force Base where he was put in charge of the control tower and Radar Approach Control (RAPCON) functions of one of the busiest airfields in the Air Force.  He next commanded the 2108th Communications Squadron with unit strength of 141 men and women in the base’s weather center, computer center, telephone system, and all communications functions. 

Then, Burr applied for the position of assistant base commander, and got it.  “I was the ‘vice’ for the base commander, and we were in charge of all the infrastructure care, maintenance and development, the Laughlin Fire Department, and personnel for those functions,” Burr said.  Burr retired with the rank of lieutenant colonel in the nation’s Bicentennial year.  Just as his birthday, July 3, is followed with rockets and fireworks each year, he celebrated the completion of an honorable career in service to his country right after the 1976 fireworks faded away.  “My six months in Southeast Asia were the most eventful in my flying career,” Burr recounted.

But Burr was not finished with public service.  In his adopted hometown of Del Rio, Burr went into volunteer service as, first member, then chair of the Joint City/County International Airport Board.  Next, he ran successfully for Del Rio City Council and simultaneously served on the Del Rio Utilities Commission.  He was “recruited” by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Texas Water Development Board to travel and lecture on water source protection strategies, then was appointed by council to represent Del Rio on the Edwards Plateau Water Planning Group.

Next, Burr was elected to the Val Verde County Hospital District Board, served on the city’s Building and Standards Commission, and served as election clerk and judge for local, state and federal elections.  Burr’s wife of 45 years, Marilyn, died of cancer in 1997.  The Hospice Office of Val Verde Regional Medical Center helped care for Marilyn in her final months.  “I wanted to find a way to repay them, and Jean Boland recruited me,” Burr said, explaining how he became a volunteer for the humanitarian community service.  

In 2002, Burr was introduced by a fighter pilot buddy, Art Christopoulos, to his sister, Betty Ann.  The couple communicated and met in Florida.  “From the word ‘go,’ we found we had common interests,” Burr said, and the couple were married Jan. 28, 2003.   Burr also remains very attached to his two sisters, Barbara Gattorn, Detroit, and Sandy Rezny, Grand Haven, Mich.

Uncharacteristically, Burr stumbles, forced to explain his lifelong passion for public service.  “I don’t really know what propels a person into it.  It certainly isn’t profit, is it?” Burr joked.  “Well, I was retired, I had some time, and I was not going to sit back in my rocking chair, and shrivel and deteriorate.  There’s mutual benefit in public service.  You work for the community, and the community keeps you alive and sparkling.”