Donald Francis Ginart - KIA

Preferred Name: Don
Nickname/Call Sign: Donnie
Date of Birth: February 19, 1944
Highest Military Grade: 0-2 – First Lieutenant
Hometown: New Orleans, LA
Headed West Date: June 3, 1969

1LT Donald F. Ginart was U.S. Air Force pilot serving with the 614th Tactical Fighter Squadron at Phan Rang Air Base. On June 3, 1969, 1LT Ginart was piloting a F-100D (#55-3790) on a close air support mission about 10 miles southwest of Quan Long in the extreme southern tip of South Vietnam.

During his second strafing pass against Viet Cong structures, his aircraft was hit by anti-aircraft fire and crashed. Ginart’s body was recovered by an Army team. (1)

Dr. David Larson wrote on the Wall of Faces in 2017: “Don Ginart and I were friends in grade school (Bienville in New Orleans) and in junior high at McDonough #28. We played together, stayed at each other’s homes as kids, sold ice cones in front of his house (just a block from mine) and picked berries in a field which would become a grade school 10 years later. We were inseparable. We were the managers of a city wide championship basketball team in the 8th grade. Neither of us were very athletic!!I have told my kids about our special relationship and hoped that they one Day would know someone as special as Donnie, as he was called then.”

Donald is buried at Metairie Cemetery in New Orleans, LA, and his name is inscribed on the Vietnam Wall of Faces at Panel 23W Line 052.

Source: (1) [Taken from coffeltdatabase.org and togetherweserved.com]; (2) Wall of Faces