David Gothard

David Gothard graduated from Michigan Tech in 1971 with a BS in Forestry. Sight unseen, Gothard boarded a North Central Airlines “Blue Goose” to Houghton and, after five layovers, arrived on Tech’s campus for the first time at freshman orientation.

“When I got to orientation week, I got the briefing on Air Force ROTC and that was it. I was immediately interested because I was interested in aviation and flying,” Gothard said. 
“I was committed early on.”

In addition to ROTC, Gothard stayed busy on campus. He served as a resident assistant in West Wadsworth Hall, overseeing 44 fellow Joes—who put their own spin on Winter Carnival tradition.

“One of the things that I really enjoyed was that every year during Winter Carnival, I would convince the resident counselors that we could paint all the walls in our dorm area with poster paint. Whatever the theme of Winter Carnival was, we would paint scenes and I was pretty good at that,” Gothard said. “It became quite popular actually.”

Gothard’s creative streak ended up earning him more than just recognition on campus, including a first date with his future wife, Diane. 

“She was actually in charge of a project for Angel Flight, the auxiliary to Arnold Air Society,” Gothard said. “She had this task to get a plaque made for their advisor. I was pretty good with making up plaques and artwork, so she came to talk to me and we hit it off from there. I made the plaque. Everybody liked it. Then, yeah, we started going out.”

After graduating from Michigan Tech, Gothard was commissioned into the United States Air Force by Lieutenant Colonel Jack Cook on August 27, 1971. He returned home to New York and received active duty orders in November 1971.

Flight school came next, and a year later, in October 1972, he and Diane were married. In 1973, Gothard completed combat crew training at Castle Air Force Base and was soon stationed at KI Sawyer Air Force Base, flying B-52 bombers across Upper Peninsula skies. While in Marquette County, he remained connected with Michigan Tech, too. During open houses at the base, Gothard worked with the University’s ROTC program to bring cadets down for visits. “We couldn’t get them on the bombers, but we could give them a ride in the KC-135,” he said. “I was the action officer for things like that, so I got to stay in touch with Tech.”

His career continued to advance. In 1980, Gothard received a rated supplement assignment and transferred to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio. “I was involved in the long range combat crew aircraft studies that Hans Mark, the 13th Secretary of the Air Force, initiated. I met Jimmy Doolittle, which was neat, and I also worked with the future Secretary of the Air Force. It was a lot of fun.”

He later attended Command and Staff College, and in 1983, returned to flying B-52s at Wurtsmith Air Force Base, where he served as radar navigator and staff officer as Chief of Current Operations.  “At that point in time, I was a Major, and we did a lot of key operations. I was in charge of all the higher headquarters missions, and we would plan all those with the crews,” Gothard said. “We actually won the Strategic Air Command’s Bombing and Navigation Competition receiving the Fairchild Trophy one of the years that I was there.”

Excelling on the flight command crew, Gothard was then assigned to current operations. In 1987, he was transferred back to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. “I was a project officer in the B-1 System Program Office (SPO) after it was resurrected by President Reagan in 1981. I was in charge of the flight control program. So, we did a lot of testing and managed all of that. It went very well.”

In 1991, he attended Defense Systems Management College and was then selected for an assignment at the Pentagon. “I spent five years in the Pentagon. I always tell people it took me that long to get paroled,” he joked. “But I learned a lot there and really enjoyed the assignment. I was basically the lead project officer in the Pentagon for the B1 and the Deputy Program Executive Officer (PEO) for fighters and bombers.”

Following the Pentagon, he was assigned to the B-2 stealth bomber program at Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma, where he served as a group commander. He retired there as a full colonel. 

After retiring from active duty, Gothard continued to work as a contractor for the Department of Defense. Working out of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, he managed mission planning software development for a portfolio of aircraft including the F-15, F-16, F-22, B-1, and B-2.

Today, Gothard remains active in several communities through volunteer and church work, as well as with organizations like the Military Officers Association of America and the Air Force Association. Every summer, he and Diane return to the Keweenaw Peninsula, spending three weeks at a time at their cabin on Gratiot Lake, just north of Houghton.

Reflecting on his time at Michigan Tech, although he never became a forester, Gothard said what he learned in Tech’s forestry program prepared him well for his career. “Well, you know, with all the work that we did flying with maps, the cartography classes that I had at Tech and the surveying classes, actually, were very useful and practical.”

A proud graduate of Michigan Tech, Gothard also recalled, with enthusiasm, how fond he was of meeting fellow Huskies during his career.

“The thing that always struck me throughout the 30 years that I was on active duty is that I would periodically run into Tech graduates. Whether they were in my timeframe or earlier. My first mentor at KI Sawyer, Lieutenant Colonel Lauri Parsinnen, was a ’53 Tech graduate. And in my senior year at Tech, our commandant of cadets was Captain John Madden. Seventeen years later, I ran into him again—as Colonel Madden—at the B-1B System Program Office, where he’s the chief engineer. So, it was nice to see Tech graduates throughout my service time.”

Interview conducted as part of the Oral History Collection during Military Service Appreciation Weekend, hosted by the Office of Alumni Engagement, May 2–3, 2025.