Donald Lopez; ace helped shape air museum
WASHINGTON - Donald S. Lopez, 84, a World War II fighter ace who became a test pilot and spacecraft engineer and had a significant role in planning the National Air and Space Museum, died March 3 at the Duke University Medical Center in Durham, N.C., after a heart attack.
Retired Marine General John R. Dailey, the museum's current director, said Lieutenant Colonel Lopez "spent the first half of his life making history and the second half commemorating it."
Colonel Lopez was based in China during World War II and flew 101 combat missions. He had five documented aerial victories, the requirement for an ace.
He was deputy director at the National Air and Space Museum, one of the world's most visited collections, from 1983 to 1990 and again from 1996 until his death.
He arrived at the museum in 1972, four years before its public opening, and recruited curators and aircraft restoration experts. He also wrote and edited text explaining the displays.
He was the first curator of the Pioneers of Flight gallery, which features original record-setting aircraft.
Donald Sewell Lopez, whose father was a welder, was born in Brooklyn, N.Y. His earliest memory was being taken to the ticker-tape parade for Charles Lindbergh when the trans-Atlantic aviator returned to New York. Colonel Lopez said he became hooked on fighter planes as a child after seeing "Wings," a 1927 silent Hollywood film about World War I.
In World War II, he received the Silver Star for once chasing off enemy planes without resorting to gunfire. It was not by choice: He had just finished a mission and was out of ammunition.
He wrote several books about flight, including the memoir "Into the Teeth of the Tiger" (1986). 