1 of 2 Pilots Killed Went to AF Academy

One of the two American pilots killed when their arms-laden cargo plane was shot down in Nicaragua was identified by his family Wednesday as an Air Force Academy graduate who lived in a small Arkansas town but ventured worldwide as a free-lance aviator.

Wallace Blaine (Buz) Sawyer said he recognized a photograph of his 41-year-old son, Wallace B. Sawyer Jr., on an identification card shown on American network television after it had been put on display by Nicaraguan government officials who said it was taken from his body.

The leftist Sandinista government said that Sawyer and an American crewman who parachuted to safety were identified by documents found on them or in the plane as U.S. military advisers in El Salvador--an assertion denied by the U.S. government. Because of a misspelling on one of the cards, the Nicaraguan officials initially identified Sawyer as Wallace B. Sawger Jr.

At a news conference in Magnolia, Ark., Sawyer, 62, said of his son: “I’m 99-and-nine-tenths positive he was not connected with the military. He disliked the military. . . . It was just not his style.” He said he had asked his son on several occasions if he worked for the CIA and that he denied it.

‘He Is a Hero’

“He flies all over the world. I don’t know what his missions are. I don’t know what he does except to fly,” the father said, according to an Associated Press account.

Choking back tears, the elder Sawyer added: “To me, he is a hero. I considered my son a patriot. He was of good moral character.”

Eugene Hasenfus, 45, the American crew member captured by Nicaraguan troops, was described by friends and fellow construction workers in Wisconsin as an outspoken, headstrong adventurer nicknamed “The Killer,” a man who gravitated toward danger in both work and play.

But family members said that his decision to go to work for an air cargo company in Florida was motivated more by money than by love of danger.

“He didn’t act like the work he was doing was dangerous or anything,” said his brother, Dennis Hasenfus, 39, a carpenter. “He’s just a man doing a job for somebody and now he’s caught up in something nobody knows anything about.”

Dennis Hasenfus said his brother did not discuss his new job, which the family assumed involved packing and unpacking air cargo.

“Deer season is coming up next month, and he was definitely planning on being around for that,” said Dennis Hasenfus, speaking outside their father’s mobile home in Marinette, Wis. “It seemed like it was an open-ended kind of job; he could take a week off when he wanted to.”

In Magnolia, a small town in southern Arkansas where Sawyer lived with his wife, a native of Thailand, and their 3-year-old son, his father said that the government had not contacted the family about the pilot’s death. But he said that did not surprise him because, he said, his son did not work for the government.

While Sawyer said his son never specifically expressed support for the contras, the U.S.-backed rebels fighting Nicaragua’s government, “My son has been a dedicated American,” he said, according to the AP. “I feel like he would fight for an underdog. If he was flying this stuff, he was doing something to fulfill a need for him.”

After graduating from high school in Magnolia, Sawyer was accepted at the Air Force Academy, where he graduated in 1968. After pilot training in North Carolina, he served from 1971 to 1973 flying “airlift aircraft” from Thailand, according to Pentagon records. He was honorably discharged from the Air Force in September, 1974.

No details have emerged about the second American reported killed in the crash, identified by the Nicaraguan government as William Cooper. The FAA said four men with the same name are licensed U.S. pilots, and the Pentagon said it could not immediately find information on any former U.S. serviceman with that name.

Gaylord Shaw reported from Washington and Maura Dolan from Marinette, Wis.