Born to Fly

It was 1967, and 19-year-old Tom Rinehart knew the likelihood of getting drafted into the Army to fight in Vietnam was high. So, he decided to enlist in the Air Force and fulfill his dream of learning to fly, despite never having been on a plane in his life.

“I gave my paperwork to the Air Force,” Rinehart says. “The Army recruiter got a hold of me before the Air Force came through and said I could fly in the Army too. I said, ‘That’s that for me,’ and enlisted.”

After two months of basic training and nine months of helicopter flight school, Rinehart was shipped off to Vietnam in the Army’s famed First Air Cavalry Division. He logged more than 1,000 hours flying his Huey helicopter from various landing zones to the front lines of the war, ferrying soldiers and equipment to and from the fighting.

“We got shot at a lot,” he says. “But I only got hit once. I didn’t get shot out of the air, but I did have to go land.”

Rinehart earned more than 35 Air Medals as well as a Bronze Star for meritorious service during his roughly one year as a combat chopper pilot in Vietnam.

He returned to the States in August 1969, turning down a possible six-month extension in combat duty. “I kind of wanted to,” he says of the extension. “I enjoyed the flying, I liked it, and I knew there wouldn’t be as much flying in the States. But at the time, I was living with my mother, and she didn’t want me to extend, so I came home.”

After serving the remainder of his Army duty at Ft. Knox, Kentucky, he lived in the Louisville area working various manufacturing jobs but didn’t fly a helicopter for nearly thirty years until, in 2000, a friend who owned a flying service that provided helicopters to local radio and TV stations let him fly the choppers whenever he wished. “I had a regular job, but this was my hobby,” he says.

By 2013, Rinehart and his wife Judy were living full-time in Naples, working part-time jobs, when Rinehart’s disability compensation for Agent Orange related ailments was finally approved by the Veterans Administration. “We said goodbye to our jobs and went to Vietnam for two weeks,” he says.

It was his first trip back since leaving the war-torn country in 1969 and Judy’s first trip ever. It was with a group of fellow Vietnam veterans and the trip was tailored to their individual experiences in the war. “We toured all through the old South Vietnam and up north to Hanoi in North Vietnam,” he says. “It was kind of surreal doing that. Vietnam is a beautiful country. Everybody likes Americans now. Nobody is shooting at you anymore,” he says with a laugh.