Gale Danner Recognized As Veteran Of The Month
WARSAW — Gale Danner, Warsaw, was honored as veteran of the month at the Kosciusko commissioners meeting held Tuesday, Feb. 5.
Danner was born in Warsaw in July of 1947 to Lorin and Betty (Symons) Danner. He grew up in the Pierceton area and graduated from Pierceton High School.
In February 1967 Danner enlisted in the Air Force. After participating in six weeks of basic training at Lackland AFB in San Antonio, Texas, Danner was stationed in Amarillo.
According to Danner, his tech instructor warned him that, due to the flat terrain, Amarillo was the only place you could go AWOL and they would still be able to see you running three days later.
While in Amarillo, Danner was trained to become an airframe repair tech. He graduated from training in August of 1967. After graduation from tech school, he was awarded 30 days of leave to spend time with family before reporting to Travis AFB where he would be sent on to Vietnam.
Danner missed his initial flight out of Travis AFB to Vietnam by 10 minutes. This gave him an extra day to find a flight to Pleiku Air Base.
As he settled into life at the base during the first month, he became acquainted with his squadron commander and discovered that the commander had graduated from the University of Kentucky. Once Danner told his commander he was from Indiana the two became good friends.
He was stationed in Pleiku throughout the Tet Offensive where, despite stories that were circulating back home of being overrun, he and his fellow airmen were able to hold down the perimeter and keep the base operational.
Several months later, the base commander ordered that all the buildings on the base be painted, specifically his quarter’s whitewashed roof. This made the commander’s building stand out in the moonlight. One would think this might make his building an easy target for the Viet Cong; however, that was not the case as the enemy was never able to land a clean shot on the luminous building and instead hit the dark brown maintenance shop that was nearly invisible from the air at night.
Danner was later sent to corrosion control school for two weeks in at Clark Air Force Base in the Philippines, which was quite a change of pace from the combat zone he had been stationed at previously. He returned to the U.S. exactly one year from the day he left. After being granted 30 days of leave, he bought a brand new blue Camaro before reporting to McChord AFB in Tacoma, Wash.
Within his first few months there, Danner earned his third stripe and began buck sergeant duties.
He spent the remainder of his air force career in McChord with a break in 1969 to attend high-performance aircraft tech school at Chanute AFB. In 1970, Danner received his fourth stripe, earning the rank of staff sergeant.
That same year he married his first wife and welcomed his daughter, Karen. He concluded his Air Force career with an honorable discharge in 1971. His son, James, was born the following year.
Danner spent the next four years working for Safeway Beverage in Bellevue, Wash., before returning to his hometown in Indiana in 1976. He worked at Danner’s Garage for his father while training as a jack-of-all-trades. He also held positions at several companies in the Warsaw area including Dalton Foundry, Peabody ABC and Jomac.
He married his second wife, Juanita, and gained a stepson, Roger. He and Juanita welcomed their daughter, Samantha, to the world in 1989.
Over the years he has enjoyed working on roundy-round race cars and dragsters, even serving as on-site pit crew during the actual races.
Danner is now retired and resides in Warsaw. He is the proud grandfather of five young women and three young men, and great-grandfather to two girls and three boys.