(Continued from page 16)

which streamlined the military chain of command.
•  Retired Gen. John Pustay, who served as an assistant to Jones, told The Associated Press on Wednesday that Jones was "a very, very visionary, sharp, perceptive guy -- somebody who could always see further down the path than others."
•  Pustay said Jones helped move the services away from being parochial to a more joint perspective. He said the two stayed in touch, getting together weekly in later years at the military retirement community in northern Virginia where they lived.
•  Under Jones' watch, the Carter administration also undertook a failed attempt to rescue 53 American hostages being held in Iran in 1980. Eight U.S. servicemen died when a helicopter crashed into a C-130 transport plane at a staging area in Iran.
•  "He was really devastated about that," said Jones' daughter, Kathy Franklin of Silver Spring, Md. She said that while Jones understood that unexpected bad weather was a factor, he also felt that the rescue attempt was impaired by the lack of a joint command to train and exercise forces for such missions.
•  "That propelled a lot of his passion for Goldwater-Nichols...creating more joint connections in the military," she said.
•  David Charles Jones was born in Aberdeen, S.D., in 1921. After the family moved to Minot, N.D., he often rode his bicycle to a nearby airfield and dreamed of becoming a pilot. He attended the University of North Dakota and Minot State College, dropping out during World War II to enlist in the Army Air Corps. He received his commission and pilot wings in February 1943, then trained pilots at air bases in the U.S.
•  During the Korean War, he flew more than 300 B-29 bomber missions over North Korea and also flew aerial tankers for midair refueling. After the war, he served for two years as a top aide to Gen. Curtis LeMay, an architect of U.S. air attacks during World War II and then the commander of the Strategic Air Command.
•  In 1960, Jones graduated from the National War College. Four years later, he decided at age 43 that he wanted to learn to fly fighters.
•  "He did better than some of the young guys in his class and he got a wing," said Franklin, who also noted that her father rose from colonel to four-star general in 5 ½ years.
•  Franklin described her father as a self-made man who read voraciously, particularly about management, and managed to become Joint Chiefs chairman despite having not graduated from college or one of the service academies.
•  "This was rather unheard-of," she said.
•  According to the Air Force website, Jones served in Vietnam as deputy com

(Continued on page 18)