High Flying Newtowners Meet Up During Air Force Week

By Nancy K. Crevier

This fall’s Air Force Week in Florida was a tiny bit of a homecoming week, as well, for Captain Greg Zencey, the son of Newtown residents Susanne and Carl Zencey. A 2000 graduate of Newtown High School and a graduate of the Air Force Academy with a degree in astronautical engineering in 2004, Capt Zencey has been on active duty in the US Air Force for six and a half years.

He has been stationed in Ramstein Air Base in Germany, and is currently stationed at Dyess Air Force Base in Texas. As a navigator responsible for accurately navigating and positioning the C-130 cargo aircraft, he is one of a crew of five that flies cargo and people all over the world. His missions have included several transports to Iraq and Afghanistan.

In the course of the years that he has served in the Air Force, he has met Air Force members from all over the country, including some from Connecticut. But during Air Force Week, October 23 to 29, in central Florida, a fellow Newtowner “dropped in” on him. Or rather, “dropped out.”

“The trip to Florida was a weeklong temporary duty in support of Air Force Week,” said Capt Zencey. “We made three airdrops, that is, dropping the Wings of Blue team out of the C130 for various public events. We flew over the University of Central Florida for a football game, the Cocoa Beach pier, and the Kennedy Space Center Visitors Center,” he said.

He had heard through the Air Force grapevine, thanks to his brother Phillip, a first lieutenant in the Air Force stationed at Whitman Air Force Base in Missouri, that a Newtown native would be jumping with the Wings of Blue on his aircraft. So he made sure to seek out Drew Taylor, a 2007 Newtown High School graduate and a senior at the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colo., where Drew is a jump instructor and a member of the elite Wings of Blue demonstration parachuting team.

“There aren’t too many of us [from Connecticut] currently serving,” said Capt Zencey, so he found it fun to share the experience with the younger Air Force cadet.

“It’s a small Air Force world,” agreed Drew, and it was a lot of funny coincidences that linked the two Newtown servicemen together. “Greg’s brother, Phil, was a senior at the academy when I was a freshman, and I had first been put in touch with him when I was at Newtown High School and interested in the academy. Guidance knew Phil was there and from Newtown, so they put me in touch with him. I’m not even sure how it really all played out,” said Drew, “but then the sergeant in charge of the drop wanted to know which of us cadets was from Newtown, because the navigator was from there.”

Before each drop, the crew always briefs the parachutists, said Drew. “When they came down, I knew Greg right away. He looked exactly like his brother.” The two men had a chance to catch up on Newtown news before the C-130 took off for the Kennedy Space Center drop. “To have Greg be the navigator on our drop was pretty cool,” said Drew.

The Florida event was the first time Capt Zencey had participated in an Air Force Week demonstration. “It was fun to showcase the C-130,” he said, “with aerial demonstrations. This was a high visibility public relations event, and it is rare for the C-130 to fly in these.”