Retired Air Force colonel, Blue Angels liaison, helped Vero Beach Air Show, veterans

At 31, Marines veteran Doy Demsick was working for the American Cancer Society when he sat down for lunch at C.J. Cannons in Vero Beach with Marty Zickert, four decades older.

“Doy, we’ve got a good thing with this Veterans Council, but we need to make it last past the old guys. And you’re the one to make that happen,” Demsick said via text Zickert told him that day in 2014 in offering him the Veterans Council of Indian River County's first program manager position.

“He was already a legend in Vero,” Demsick said. “So when this big, friendly Air Force colonel pulls up in a red Corvette and tells you to get to work, you do it.

“Marty was a true leader. He was bombastic and full of electricity,” Demsick continued. “He made you want to be part of whatever he was doing. It was hard to be around him and not feel the energy.”

It’s one example of how Zickert became a mainstay in the Indian River County veterans and philanthropic communities: He was a great communicator who engendered trust and wasn’t scared to ask people to help others in need.

Zickert, 82, died Sunday from injuries sustained in a fall while he was on his way back to Vero Beach from Nashville, according to a Facebook post from his son, Michael.

Indian River County Commissioner Laura Moss, who worked with Zickert on numerous projects the past six years, confirmed the news.

“I’m at such a loss; the whole community is,” said Moss, who, while Vero Beach’s mayor in 2017, met Zickert at a 1980s-type prom at Walking Tree Brewery to raise money for veterans-service programs.

The outgoing Moss said she was in a buffet line and decided to introduce herself to Zickert after seeing him waiting, too, but sort of dancing in place.

“From the moment we met we just understood each other,” she said, calling him her “personal alter ego.”

“We both were on the same mission,” she said — to make the community a better place to live. We were both in positions to effect change.”

Having known Zickert and Moss — and having seen them together at various events over the years — they had something else in common.

Lots of energy.

So much so Moss said she called Zickert a “high flyer.”

It's rare for one person have a key hand in so many successful philanthropic projects in such a relatively short time.

As past president of Literacy Services of Indian River County, I met Zickert, who joined the board shortly after I left in about 2010. I knew the agency would be in good hands with new board members and an executive director.

That’s about the time Tony Young, a retired Army colonel and veterans advocate, met Zickert, who always was full of ideas on how to raise money and improve services.

“The veterans are going to open a store and manage it with volunteers,” Young said Zickert proposed at a Veterans Council meeting, noting the Indian River Mall had vacancies after the economic downturn of 2008. “(Fellow council members) thought he’d lost his mind.”

Nonetheless, the region’s first military supply store and veterans service center opened in 2011, and remains open.

Zickert was motived, Young and Moss said, by seeing needs ― economic, health ― of veterans returning home. Young said Zickert was particularly moved after meeting a young couple, both veterans, living out of their car.

“He definitely was a man who was always acting for the community and to help people in need,” said Young.

Zickert joined another public-facing project to raise money for local charities, including those serving veterans. He became the Vero Beach Air Show’s liaison to the Navy Blue Angels and helped bring the flight demonstration squadron to town in 2014, raising about $100,000.

The Blue Angels returned for the third time in 2022 and are expected to fly locally again in May.

“Marty stepped right up from the get-go,” said Eric Menger, a former Navy captain and the city’s former airport director.

What’s more, Menger said, Zickert showed his leadership by working closely to ensure the more than 60 members of the Blue Angels’ support team had what they needed for a successful show.

Demsick echoed Menger on Zickert's leadership.

“One thing I took from him was his emphasis on delegation,” Demsick said. “He’d say, 'you find the right people, get them together and then get out of the way'.”

Demsick was Zickert’s liaison to what eventually became a new nonprofit for veterans who served from 1990 to present: Next Generation Veterans of Indian River County.

“He was our adviser, our mentor and our friend,” Demsick said. “He was one of us, too, as a proud global war on terrorism veteran, among his other engagements.”

Born in Greenwood, Wisconsin, Zickert enlisted, then served 30 years in the Air Force, retiring as a colonel in May 1992, according to a profile by TCPalm’s Joe Crankshaw.

Zickert played on the renowned Lackland Air Force Base baseball team before flying as a navigator aboard an KC-135, a flying fuel station for fighter bombers, over Cambodia during the Vietnam War.

He served all over the world, including as commanding officer of the U.S. base at Spangdahlem, Germany, which has about 5,000 personnel, TCPalm reported.

Upon “retirement,” Zickert taught in an inner-city Houston school before moving to Indian River County and working in financial services.

In addition to helping on the literacy front, Zickert volunteered to complete tax returns for residents in need under a United Way program, said Michael Kint, the agency’s former CEO.

“He worked in the trenches,” said Kint, who eventually recruited him to serve on the agency’s board. “He was a community champion.”

Moss summed things up.

“He loved an entire community passionately and they loved him back the same way,” she said.

That was evident Wednesday morning reading many tributes to him posted on Facebook from a cross-section of the community. As of this writing, no memorial arrangements were available.

Like many others, I’ll miss Zickert’s big smile, hearty laugh and engaging personality. As Moss put it, “he was such an incredible man.”

This column reflects the opinion of Laurence Reisman. Contact him via email at larry.reisman@tcpalm.com, phone at 772-978-2223, Facebook.com/larryreisman or Twitter @LaurenceReisman.

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This article originally appeared on Treasure Coast Newspapers: Vero Beach Air Show Blue Angels liaison, veteran advocate to be missed