John Kline

July 2, 2015
John William Kline, a retired major general in the United States Air Force and an acclaimed amateur golfer, died peacefully in San Antonio on Friday, July 2, 2015, a few days after his 96th birthday.

Kline was born in Zanesville, Ohio, in 1919 to Gerry William Kline and Lillian Elizabeth Scheiderer Kline. He attended Ohio University as a premedical student and in his senior year joined the Army Air Corps. He received his wings and commission in San Antonio in 1941 and was transferred July 1, 1942, to Blackland Army Air Field in Waco, where that same evening he met Katherine Edmond Winton at a dance. They were married the following October and danced happily together until her death in 2008.

This May was the first time he missed the Society of Seniors golf tournament named in his honor, the John Kline Super Senior. He had played in the tournament since its inception in 2001. A golfer from the age of ten, he began winning or placing in major tournaments in 1948, when he was runner-up in the European Theater Championship and low amateur in the Swiss Open. He qualified for the USGA Amateur four times between 1952 and 1959 and qualified for the USGA Open in 1964. As a senior golfer he was ranked in the Top 10 Senior Amateurs five times and was inducted into the Senior Amateur Hall of Fame in 1999. In all, he won 29 tournaments, was runner-up in another 40, had 11 holes-in-one and first shot his age at 66.

In his military career he was known for his brilliance as a strategist and problem solver. As a young officer he organized the training of glider pilots for the coming invasion of Fortress Europe. In 1945 he was sent to Germany, where he helped plan the Berlin Airlift. In the early 1950s at the newly formed headquarters of the Strategic Air Command in Omaha, Neb., he created the Command Post and conducted daily briefings. In conjunction, Kline set up the "red telephone" system that allowed the SAC commander to speak directly and securely with his commanders throughout the world. During 1956-57, at the Air War College in Montgomery, Ala., he wrote his thesis on the need for an international airborne alert, a plan that was implemented several years later.

After four years as deputy director for Eighth Air Force Strategic Air Command operations at Westover AFB in Massachusetts, he transferred to Hunter AFB in Savannah, Ga., as wing commander of the 2nd Bomb Wing. There, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, he was in command of ninety B-47 aircraft fully loaded with crews on alert to bomb Cuba if President Kennedy had so ordered.

He served as B-52 wing commander at Dow AFB in Maine, then director of operations for Eighth Air Force, where he was promoted to brigadier general and made chief of staff. In spring, 1966 he went to Guam as vice commander of the 3rd Air Division, the unit commanding the B-52 bombing in Vietnam.

He returned to SAC Headquarters in Omaha as deputy director of operations. Among his duties was monitoring the War Plan, the major overall plan that identified targets in the Soviet Union in the event of war. In May, 1969 Kline was promoted to major general and transferred to Shreveport, La., as vice commander of the 2nd Air Force. He was retired in 1972.

Among the numerous awards he had earned were the Legion of Merit (four times) and the Distinguished Service Award.

John Kline's passions were his family, golf and music. He loved music and dancing to swing from the 1940s. On road trips he listened to a favorite radio station and could identify the singer and band after a few notes and recite the places he had seen or heard them.

He is survived by his three daughters, Susan Morehead, Flora Creighton and Liz Kline and Liz's husband, Paul Sweeney; seven grandchildren, Katy Manninen, Lucian Morehead, Sarah, Marshall, Carter and Mary Creighton, and Emmett Sweeney; nine great-grandchildren, Susan Sorahan, Bobby Witt, Cole and Hudson Morehead, Camden, Lila and Miles Coleman, and Cole and Clay Creighton, as well as two great-great grandsons, Stanley and Marvin Sorahan.

A graveside service is scheduled for 1:30 pm on Thursday July 9 at Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery, 1520 Harry Wurzbach Road, San Antonio 78209. A reception will follow at The Towers on Park Lane.