Richard L. (Dick) Picard, Major USAF (Ret)
Dick Picard was born in Charleston, SC in 1939, and brought up in the western Pennsylvania communities of Erie and Wexford, graduating from Perry HS on Pittsburgh’s North side in 1957. He attended Northrop Institute of Technology in Inglewood, CA, graduating in 1959 with an Aircraft and Powerplant Mechanics license. After working in Capital Airlines in Washington, DC he returned to school at Northrop and graduated in 1962 with a Bachelor degree in Aircraft Maintenance Engineering.
He entered the United States Air Force in June 1962 and served as an Aircraft Maintenance Officer, Logistics Officer, and a C-130A and E Navigator and Instructor Navigator. He was a veteran of the Viet Nam War flying over 1,300 combat hours between 1967 and 1970 while stationed in Taiwan and Okinawa. Among others, he was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross (DFC) with 2 Oak Leaf Clusters (OLCs) and the Air Medal with 11 OLCs. He retired from the Air Force in 1984 and with a total of over 5,000 flying hours and attended the University of Arkansas at Little Rock attaining a teaching certificate in 1986.
He has been a high school physics teacher at Parkview Arts/Science Magnet High School in Little Rock, AR from 1986 until this writing (2000). Dick as also been remarkably active in science education at the state level serving as president of the Arkansas Science Teachers Association in 1996/1997 among other honors for exceptional teaching.