U.S. NAMES 1ST CASUALTY BUT DAD HOLDS OUT HOPE

From the: The Orlando Sentinel archive

U.S. NAMES 1ST CASUALTY
BUT DAD HOLDS OUT HOPE

Published: Friday, January 18, 1991 Section: A SECTION Page: A1
By Michael Griffin Of The Sentinel Staff

Michael Scott Speicher was a wide-eyed 5-year-old when his dad took him on his first airplane ride. Soaring a thousand feet above the Earth, he fell in love with the wonder of flight.

Twenty-eight years later, Lt. Cmdr. Michael Scott Speicher of Orange Park, near Jacksonville, was piloting his Navy F/A-18 fighter over Iraq when he became the first American casualty of the Persian Gulf war.

Although Pentagon officials have said that Speicher, 33, is dead, he is officially listed as missing in action because his remains have not been recovered.

Speicher is married. He and his wife, Joann, have two children - a daughter, Meghan, 3, and an 18-month-old son, Michael.

The Iowa native and graduate of Florida State University was attached to the USS Saratoga, an aircraft carrier based in Mayport.

His plane was shot down by a surface-to-air missile over Iraq early Thursday.

''I thought he would never be shot down,'' Speicher's stunned father, Wallace, said later from his Jacksonville apartment.

''He was good. He was about the best that ever came through here.''

Wallace ''Spike'' Speicher, 70, had just heard the news from his daughter-in-law when he spoke to a Sentinel reporter by phone.

Michael had always wanted to be a pilot, ever since that day in 1963 when his dad had taken him flying.

His father was a fighter pilot in Italy for the Army Air Corps during World War II, and he instilled a love of planes and the military in his son.

''He loves to do a lot of things, but all he ever talks about is flying,'' Wallace said. ''Flying and his kids.''

''I taught him some of my old moves, and he used to get a kick out of it,'' he said. ''I just can't imagine him getting hit like this.''

Clinging to hope, Wallace said he is praying that his son managed to bail out over the gulf and that he still might be alive.

''He was captain of the FSU swim team,'' he said. ''He's a strong swimmer - a good pilot and a good swimmer.

''Scotty's coming home.''