Richard E. Manley

September 11, 1923 – September 12, 2018

Richard Manley passed away Wednesday, September 12, 2018 at Kitty Askins Hospice Center, the day after his 95th birthday. Though greatly saddened, his loved ones are comforted by his faith that he would be rejoining his wife and the love of his life for 60 years, Zora Hodges Manley, who died in 2011.

Born in Illinois to Melvin and Frieda Luedtke Manley, Richard grew up near Montgomery, Alabama. He was valedictorian of his high school class before joining the Army Air Corps in 1943. Stationed in England with the 95th Bomb Group, he flew B-17s in numerous bombing sorties over Germany, as well as food drops to the starving Dutch in Holland, before WWII ended. 

Afterwards, he remained in uniform in a search-and-rescue unit stationed in the Azores, hunting for aircrews lost at sea and guiding flights with critical missions, including flying the first elected president of Liberia to his inauguration and congressional delegations to participate in India’s Independence Day.

As one of the new Air Force’s first Master Navigators, Manley mapped air routes around the globe, including to tropical islands where no planes had ever landed before. He charted volcanic eruptions and then-newly-discovered jet streams, and flew into Pacific hurricanes as part of a “typhoon chaser” Weather Recon crew.

When technology began making human navigation obsolete, Manley retrained to become a Nuclear Weapons Officer. This brought him and his family to Seymour Johnson in 1959, where he served as commander of the 53rd Munitions Maintenance Squadron. 

Following a now-famous disaster on the night of January 24, 1961, when a B-52 loaded with two H-bombs crashed 12 miles north of Goldsboro, Manley led the teams that recovered one of the lost weapons and all the critical mechanisms of the other. Because he never sought any special recognition, most books and articles about the incident have misattributed this key role to others.

Subsequent assignments took Manley and his family to Germany; back to Seymour Johnson; then Kansas. Zora Manley and her two sons returned to Goldsboro when Colonel Manley was sent to Danang, Vietnam in 1968-69, during the height of the war. Afterwards they were assigned to Nellis AFB in Las Vegas, Nevada, where Manley retired in 1970. He moved his family back to Goldsboro for good, where they had remained members of Madison Avenue Baptist Church since 1959.

For the next 16 years, Manley served as Manager of Quality at General Electric’s Carolina Welds Plant on George Street (now closed). At the same time, he dove into community service, actively participating in Rotary, United Way, the Salvation Army, Wayne County Sheltered Workshop, Tuscarora Boy Scout Council, the Extension Master Gardener program, and Golden K. He was also a founding member of the ROMEOs lunch club (Retired Old Men Eating Out). 

Richard enjoyed gardening, bird watching, and sailing, but most of all, traveling and engaging in social activities with his cherished wife, Zora. The two of them often visited other states and foreign countries, but especially loved exploring the beaches and mountains of their adopted state. They shared a deep appreciation for art and nature, a gift for seeing the funnier side of life, and an abiding pleasure in the fellowship of friends. 

Richard Manley is survived by his sons Mark and Roger, daughters-in-law Elizabeth and Theadora, grandchildren Margaret and David, nieces Patricia, Barbara and Mahala, and nephews Bill, Carl, and Sam. 

The family will receive friends on Saturday, September 22, 2018 from 10:00 – 11:00 a.m. in the fellowship hall of Madison Avenue Baptist Church followed by a service to celebrate Richard’s life at 11:00 a.m. Burial will be in Wayne Memorial Park.

The family would like to express a special thanks to the staff at Brookdale Senior Living for all the care and genuine affection shown to Richard Manley over the past four years.