Naval Air Station Patuxent River’s outgoing commanding officer used one of his final acts in charge of the installation to close out an 81-year-old story — presenting a World War II naval aviator’s dog tags to his daughter, who was nine months old when her father was killed in a 1945 plane crash.
Capt. Mark Zematis presented the framed dog tags to Kathleen Foltyn, now in her 80s and living in Hollywood, Maryland, during his change of command ceremony at NAS Patuxent River on Sept. 24, personally inviting her and her husband, Lou, as his guests.
“These dog tags and the man who wore them tell the story of that sacrifice,” Zematis told the crowd, describing how most streets on the installation bear the name of an aviator or aircrewman killed in an aviation mishap in service to the country. “Our street signs are sacred memorials reminding us that test and evaluation is an inherently dangerous business, and that our current technological superiority was bought with the courage of those who never came home.”
A discovery buried for decades
The dog tags belonged to Lt. William Oscar Needham, and their story began in 2013, during an environmental cleanup of a former dump site on the installation, when a number of World War II-era dog tags were unearthed. Mike Smolek, the installation’s cultural resources officer at the time, researched the names and found detailed records on only one of them.
“I decided to research one, which happened to be William Oscar Needham,” Smolek said at the time. “I was able to find out a lot of information about him at the Naval Historical Center website.”
Needham enlisted in the Navy at 18 and trained at Hampton Roads Naval Training Station in Virginia before being assigned to NAS Pensacola for pilot training in 1936. He advanced to Aviation Machinist’s Mate 1st Class, then Chief Petty Officer and Warrant Officer, before being commissioned as a Lieutenant in 1943 — one of the rarest designations in Navy history, an enlisted sailor who became a naval aviator.
His first operational assignment was Patrol Squadron Five, the “Mad Foxes” — the same squadron where Zematis began his own Navy flying career decades later. Needham became one of the Navy’s legendary “Flying Chiefs” in 1940 and was the first pilot to qualify in the PBY-3 Catalina, the seaplane that would later spot the Japanese fleet at the Battle of Midway. He was killed May 17, 1945, in a crash near Beltsville, Maryland, while test-flying an R5O transport aircraft out of NAS Anacostia — just over two months shy of his 34th birthday.
The dog tags’ story ran in Pax River’s base newspaper in 2013, but little came of it until this past summer, when Needham’s daughter came across the old article and reached out to the installation.
“Lt. Needham’s daughter, Ms. Kathleen Foltyn, was nine months old when her father died and currently lives in Hollywood, Maryland,” said Jim Swift of the installation’s Planning and Conservation Branch. “She came across the article and reached out to see if she could get her father’s dog tag.”
Working with current cultural resources officer Chris Bryan, Swift tracked down the dog tag, still in the installation’s possession, and worked with command leadership on how to return it. “Since Ms. Foltyn is in her 80’s now, we all felt that this deserved a little more than mailing the dog tag and information to her or simply handing her an envelope,” Swift said.
Zematis agreed, inviting Foltyn to his change of command ceremony to receive the dog tags in person, framed alongside a photo of the PBY Catalina her father once flew.
“Ms. Foltyn, your father gave everything to naval aviation, and his courage paved the way for generations of aviators who followed in his footsteps,” Zematis told her during the ceremony. “His story did not end in 1945, and it didn’t end in the Pax River soil. Ma’am, we’d be honored to give you these dog tags on behalf of a grateful Navy and a grateful nation.”
A changing of the guard
The ceremony also marked the end of Zematis’s tenure at Pax River, for which he received the Legion of Merit, and the start of Capt. Robert Chandler’s command. Chandler, a native of Inverness, Florida, enlisted in the Navy in March 1992 and was commissioned as an officer in January 2002, accumulating more than 1,100 flight hours across multiple reconnaissance squadrons. His arrival marks two firsts for the installation: he is the last officer to advance to command through the Navy’s “Fleet Up” program at Pax River, and the first prior-enlisted officer to lead the installation.
“NAS Pax River means a lot to me and my family; we moved here in January 1998 as a second class petty officer, and left in October 2001 as a first class to continue in the Navy as an officer,” Chandler said.
NAS Patuxent River, commissioned in 1943, serves as the Navy’s premier research, development, test and evaluation complex for naval aviation, supporting a workforce of more than 25,000 people.
