Dean Hess

Dean Elmer Hess was born in Marietta, Ohio, becoming a minister of the Disciples of Christ Church. He enlisted in the Army Air Forces' Aviation Cadet Program after the attack on Pearl Harbor, and flew more than 60 combat missions over Germany including one in which he inadvertently bombed an orphanage in Kaiserslautern. Recalled by the Air Force for the Korean Conflict, he was supposed to train the nascent South Korean Air Force but teamed up a Fifth Air Force chaplain and other airmen, and together with Korean social workers began a program to rescue children orphaned and displaced by the war. Hess and the others evacuated children from Seoul, Incheon and other places on the peninsula in what became known as "Operation Kiddy Car." After the Korean War ended, he remained in the Air Force in recruiting and public affairs billets until retiring as a lieutenant colonel in 1969. He and his wife, the former Mary Lorentz, had three sons and a daughter.