David Eckley

MASON - With the skills he developed as a young boy growing up in Pennsylvania, David C. Eckley might well have become a major league baseball player.

Instead, though, he joined the U.S. Air Force where he became a pilot, flying more than 300 combat missions from the Korean War to Vietnam.

And, after his military career ended, he became a successful businessman.

But to his wife, his six sons and daughters, 18 grandchildren and 13 great-grandchildren, what he did best was to be a husband, a father and grandfather.

"He loved his family; and no one could ask for a better father,'' said his son, David Eckley of Liberty Township. "He was the best."

Mr. Eckley died Sept. 5 after a four-year-long battle with cancer. He was 80.

Born and raised in Valley View, Pa., near State College, of parents who farmed and a father who was a miner, Mr. Eckley grew up playing baseball - a third baseman of much higher-than-average skills.

The Pittsburgh Pirates scouted him as a young high school player and wanted to sign him, but, in 1950, when the Korean War broke out, Mr. Eckley joined the Air Force instead, becoming a B-29 pilot, flying bombing missions over North Korean targets.

It was while he was in the Air Force during the Korean War that he married his wife, Peggy. His son said the family celebrated their mother and father's 60th wedding anniversary just about a week before he died.

He stayed in the Air Force after the war; and, in the 1960s, was called to duty as a duty again - this time flying refueling missions in Vietnam.

Mr. Eckley had over 13,000 hours of flight time before retiring from the Air Force and settling near Sacramento, Calif., near where he was stationed in the Air Force.

Mr. Eckley coached his kids' baseball teams over the years and was a student of the game, his son David said.

"He could bunt like nobody's business,'' David said. "He would do this thing where he would put a dollar bill on the ground down the third base line and tell you that if he bunted the ball and it didn't land on the dollar bill, you could have it.

"I don't remember him losing many dollar bills,'' David Eckley said.

Mr. Eckley was also an avid trout fisherman.

"Growing up in California, it was all baseball and fishing for us kids,'' David Eckley said. "When the trout were running, we'd pack up and head up into the mountains and fish the streams. He loved it. So did we."

Six years ago, David Eckley said, his parents moved to Mason to be close to David's kids, the only grandchildren who were not grown.

"He'd be there at all there baseball games, soccer matches, golf matches,'' David Eckley recalled. "He was a big part of their lives.

Services have been held.

In addition to his wife and son, survivors include two other sons, Daniel Eckley of Cottonwood, Calif. and Gary Eckley of Huntington Beach, Calif.; and three daughters, Dawn Parker of Canyon, Texas, Linda Muck of Roseville, Calif., and Carla Wedman, Roseville, Calif.

Memorials: Moeller Baseball, 9001 Montgomery Road, Cincinnati, OH 45242.

Written by Howard Wilkinson | hwilkinson@enquirer.com