Dick Dewar: Air Force veteran reflects on a lifetime of service

Jun. 5—Service just comes naturally for Dick Dewar, and he has served the country as a member of the Air Force and Aiken as a member of its city council.

Dewar said was born in 1941 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston best known for being the location of Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

He said his father was on the USS Missouri when the Japanese surrendered on Sept. 2, 1945, and his great-grandfather was a Medal of Honor winner in the late 1800s.

When he was around 11 years old, his family moved from Cambridge to another Boston suburb, Stoneham, Massachusetts.

Stoneham is located 9 miles north of Boston and is best known as the home of figure skater Nancy Kerrigan.

Kerrigan is a two-time Olympic medalist. She won the bronze in 1992 and the silver in 1994. Kerrigan is best remembered for being the victim of an attack organized by the ex-husband of fellow figure skater Tonya Harding.

Dewar said Kerrigan's mother, Brenda, and he were in the same class at Stoneham High School. He said he graduated from Stoneham at the age of 16.

"I started first grade early," Dewar said. "That's what that was all about."

Prior to the 1950s and 1960s, kindergarten was not mandatory for children. Thus, school began with the first grade.

Dewar said he enrolled at Boston College after high school, majoring in sociology.

Boston College is a Jesuit research university. It is perhaps best known for its athletic teams, the Eagles. The Eagles are best known for their football team's 1984 upset of the Miami Hurricanes on a last-second hail Mary by Doug Flutie (he went on to win the Heisman Trophy) and their basketball team's involvement in a gambling scandal.

In an interview in early May, Dewar's jacket was lined with the Boston College logo. He said he was very proud of being a graduate of the school.

He graduated in 1962 at the age of 20 and was commissioned a second lieutenant in the Air Force that September.

Dewar said he served for five years as a missile launch officer at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base near Tucson, Arizona.

At the height of the Cold War in the 1950s and 1960s, the United States and the Soviet Union both had developed and prepared intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of striking the other. One of these missiles was the Titan II which was kept in three places including Tucson.

"You'll have to ask the Air Force [how someone with a sociology degree ends up working with intercontinental ballistic missiles]," Dewar said. "They felt they could take people with general-type degrees, political science, any non-technical-type of degree and they sent us to school at Sheppard Air Force Base for I think it was 16 weeks."

Dewar said the course taught basic electricity, electronics and plumbing.

"The key is that you needed to have a book that they called the Dash One ...," Dewar continued. "It's the basic manual. It tells you what you do under different circumstances."

He said he never felt they were close to launching a missile. Dewar said there was "sort of" an alert during the Cuban Missile Crisis but said, in his opinion, there was never an alert high enough to seriously consider launching missiles.

The Cuban Missile Crisis occurred in mid-1963 when the United States discovered the Soviets were installing intercontinental ballistic missiles in Cuba. Eventually, the Soviets agreed to withdraw the missiles in exchange for a pledge from the United States not to invade Cuba and topple the Castro regime.

Dewar said that serving as a missile launch officer meant accepting an awesome responsibility. He said it was similar to being a fighter pilot or a submarine commander that launches missiles that are going to kill people.

"There were some people that they started out with the idea that they would turn the key if they had to, but on a rare occasion somebody would go to the commander and say, 'If it came to crunch time, I'm not sure I could turn the key,'" Dewar said. "They were immediately removed from duty and reassigned someplace else."

He said after he left Tucson, he went to Minot, N.D., where the Air Force was installing the Minuteman III missile. Dewar said he was in North Dakota in the early 1970s.

Dewar said he then served at the headquarters of the Strategic Air Command in Omaha, Nebraska, in the early to mid 1970s.

Strategic Air Command was an Air Force command established to control two parts of the nuclear triad: strategic bombers and the intercontinental ballistic missiles. The third component, submarine-based nuclear weapons, were controlled by the Navy.

He said he went to Armed Forces Staff College and then was posted to Kunsan Air Base in South Korea where he served as a squadron commander.

The United States has maintained a military presence in South Korea since Korean War hostilities ended in 1953 to deter another invasion by North Korea.

Dewar said he was in charge of about 400 people and providing security anytime a major weapon was moved.

Dewar said he served in the Air Force for 20 years, retiring in July 1982 as a lieutenant colonel.

After he left the Air Force, Dewar went into private security. He said he was assigned to work the 1984 Olympic games where he was tasked with managing 7,500 people and securing the athlete villages, several venues and the opening and closing ceremonies.

"We started in 1982," Dewar said. "In essence, I built the largest guard company and then tore it down. It took about two and a half years."

He said he was with Bruce Jenner, now known as Caitlyn Jenner, who told him that Rafer Johnson was going light the torch to begin the games.

Jenner is the 1976 Olympic gold medalist in the decathlon. After his career ended, Jenner became an actor and came out as a transgender woman in 2015. She ran in the 2021 California gubernatorial recall as a Republican.

Johnson was the decathlon gold medalist in the 1960 Olympics. He also became an actor and broadcaster. Johnson was also one of three people who tackled Sirhan Sirhan after he shot Robert F. Kennedy in 1968.

Dewar said he watched Jimmy Connors practice tennis at UCLA.

"We saw them all," Dewar said.

After the Olympics, Dewar went to work for a company that provided security for the Emmys and the Oscars. He said he didn't work the event at the beginning but did so at the end of his career.

"One year, I realized I hadn't seen any of the movies that won so I went out to see them ... so that I could appreciate them," Dewar said.

He said that during one awards show he escorted Clint Eastwood back to his seat after he was interviewed after he won an award.

Eastwood is known for playing traditionally masculine characters and for being an Emmy award-winning director of "Unforgiven" and "Million Dollar Baby." He's also known for being an outspoken Conservative.

"[I] had a nice conversation with him," Dewar said. "He's wonderful, wonderful. What you see is what you get."

He added that Tom Hanks was also a wonderful, wonderful person.

Hanks is one of the most famous actors of all time. He's known for playing roles in "Forrest Gump," "Saving Private Ryan," "Philadelphia," "Cast Away" and "Catch Me If You Can" and as Woody in "Toy Story."

Dewar eventually retired after 20 years and and he and his wife decided to leave California.

"We retired in Thousand Oaks, California, with the idea that our children would be close," Dewar said. "We realized that we had one in the Marines, one in San Francisco and one going to graduate school in San Diego, and it was time for us to decide is this where we want to retire to. The answer was no."

The choice came down to Aiken or Tucson.

He said his wife's cousin was one of the first chemists at the Savannah River Site. Dewar said that he and his wife visited her cousin in 1980, and he really kind of fell in love with Aiken.

"It wasn't much of a contest," Dewar said. "Tucson was really more of a California-lite."

They moved to Aiken in 2003.

Dewar ran for and was elected to the Aiken City Council in 2006. He served from 2007 until he decided not to run for reelection in 2019.

"I've always been politically interested in wherever I lived," Dewar said. "I kind of stayed out of politics in the military, but once I retired I kept up with it."

He added that he served on the Traffic and Transportation Commission in Thousand Oaks for at least 15 years and that he started working taxes for seniors there.

"If you're going to live in a local community, you have an obligation to know what's going on," Dewar said. "That's an obligation that a lot of people in Aiken take seriously."

He said that transparency was his biggest push on the council. Dewar said he worked to make the city's budget and website more usable for the city's residents.

Dewar is also active in several veteran organizations in Aiken.

He and his wife, Mary Lou, have three children.

Dewar said his daughter, Cynthia, was a dean of online education and library science at City College of San Francisco; his oldest son, Kyle, is a technical manager and a colonel in the Marine Corps Reserves; and his youngest son, John, is an accountant in Ireland.

"I'm very proud of the work ethic that each of my children have," Dewar said. "They earn their money, and they receive adequate compensation."

Dewar added that Kyle is named after his great-great grandfather who won the Medal of Honor in the late 1800s.