The “Fly Navy” license plate on his Navy-gray Jeep. The USS Wasp cap he wears proudly on his head. And his name? You can call him “Master Chief.”

Retired Command Master Chief Denny Behr would say his time of service hasn’t ended. It’s part of him. It’s his mission. And in regard to the Navy, he said it mentored and rewarded him. It changed his life. “It was a foundation for two successful careers,” he said.

Behr was born in rural southern Minnesota to a “tough German” father and “sweet little Norwegian” mother. His father was a sharecropper, meaning he rented rather than owned the land he farmed. As a result Behr and his parents moved from farm to farm. For Behr, that meant moving from school to school and working very, very hard. That work ethic was beat into him from a young age. “The sensitivity training, it didn’t exist,” Behr noted. “That was the norm.”

Life was simple where Behr lived. That included limited plumbing and electricity. However, it was electricity, not farming, that Behr was drawn to. A “natural drive for technology,” Behr called it. He attended technical school for two years, studied electronics and communications, and took a summer job between school years at the radio and TV station in Austin, Minnesota. He graduated in 1965.

Right around that time, he got his draft notice in the mail. Behr admitted he was “dumb and naive” about it. He thought he could be “a John Wayne, a hero, and go over to Vietnam and solve the problem.” Thankfully, a family member stepped in in the knick of time. Behr’s uncle, Art, a World War II Navy Veteran who traveled the world for his military service and construction job, showed up at the house and got Behr to enlist in the Navy. “He might have saved it [my life] at the 11th hour,” Behr said.

Behr went to Navy boot camp at Naval Station Great Lakes in Illinois. Though his hardworking “farm boy” background prepared him for some of the physical strain, Behr described boot camp as “unnecessarily tough.” And compared to the wide open fields of Minnesota, the barracks, which were filled to the brim with young men, felt unbearable at times. “I just psychologically started losing it…I didn’t know what was happening to me,” Behr said. One night, Behr snuck into a janitor’s closet and let it out. “Somehow, with the grace of God, I got out of there and made it through that night,” he said.

Despite the challenges, Behr survived boot camp, even becoming a squad leader. After many tests and interviews, he was assigned to be an aviation electronics technician and was sent to the Naval Air Technical Training Center in Millington, Tennessee, to study basic aviation electronics. Behr’s previous technical school training paid off: He got good grades in his Navy classes and earned the title of “honor man,” which came with “perks” such as free coffee, no marching, and no weekend duty. “I thought I’d died and gone to heaven!” Behr said. “All of a sudden I’m like an academic genius! The dumb farm kid that my dad kept hollering at!”

After basic classes, he transferred to Naval Station Norfolk in Virginia for specialized training to become an anti-submarine warfare technician, or sub hunter. For this job, Behr had to get a top secret clearance. The classes were also classified. Lectures, which took place in a locked classroom, involved studying pictures of Soviet submarines. As a sub hunter, Behr would have to identify submarines by the sounds their propellors made in the water. “No two propellors are exactly the same…they were audible fingerprints of that sub,” Behr explained. He also had to become familiar with the natural sounds of the ocean, from mammals to earthquakes, so he could differentiate those sounds from those of subs.

Behr was assigned a squadron, Air Anti-Submarine Squadron 31 — VS-31, the “Topcats” — and had a brief, chaotic stint on the aircraft carrier USS Wasp before returning to the U.S. for combat air crew school and open ocean survival training at Naval Air Station Key West in Florida. He would return to the Wasp and VS-31 after training and remain with both for the rest of his active service.

On sub hunter missions, Behr rode back seat in the four-seater Grumman S2-E Tracker, an aircraft that could both track and destroy submarines. While on the Wasp he served in the Caribbean, North Atlantic, and Mediterranean. His deployments on the carrier typically lasted several weeks; however, if a Soviet sub had been detected, deployments could last longer. That could be “hard on morale,” Behr said. Most of the time, his plane didn’t make contact with a submarine.

“Sub hunting is 97 percent boredom because you’re just back and forth, back and forth, back and forth [in the plane],” Behr said, referring to the many sweeps anti-sub aircraft made over areas of the vast sea or ocean.

However, there was that 3 percent of the time when the job was far from boring, Behr said. He and his crew would detect a Soviet sub in the water and track it, an action Behr called a “hot pursuit.” At those times, Behr’s internal struggle with his job came into sharp focus.

The work was exciting and addictive, he said, but he also felt the heavy nature of it. If it had been deemed necessary, his plane might have been tasked with destroying a sub and killing the crew on it. “The Cold War got so hot we’d have live weapons and stuff with us,” he said. He thought about the worldwide consequences if such an action had to happen. The job could also change quickly. One time, while Behr was onboard the Wasp, a Soviet plane that had been “harassing” the carrier and disrupting Wasp flight operations crashed into the ocean. In moments, the mission changed from hunting Soviets to carrying out a recovery operation.

“It’s sad. It’s sinful. The money, the time. When I reflect back, now that I’m 80 years old [and] a grandpa…this world is so broken,” he said.

Behr’s active service ended in 1969. He left the service and some time later took a job back at the radio and TV station in Austin, Minnesota, where he worked as a student. He felt the desire to switch from commercial broadcasting to public broadcasting and got a job in engineering at the public broadcasting station on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus, which would later become Wisconsin Public Television. He stayed there for the remainder of his civilian career and retired as the administrator of the Wisconsin Educational Communications Board, Delivery Division, for Wisconsin Public Television and Wisconsin Public Radio.

Another reason Behr was drawn to Madison: He wanted to get back to hunting submarines. And, Behr said, “The Navy wanted more of me.” He didn’t go back into the regular Navy, though, but rather into the Naval Air Reserve. With job and family responsibilities, “the risk factor was less for getting killed” in the reserve, Behr said, since his aircraft took off from land rather than carriers. He joined Anti-Submarine Patrol Squadron 90 (VP-90) at Naval Air Station Glenview in Illinois. His crew, nicknamed the “Dirty Dozen,” flew missions in a Lockheed P-3 Orion aircraft.

Behr still loved the work. During his time in the Naval Air Reserve, Behr was deployed to both the Atlantic and Pacific to engage in submarine-tracking activities. Behr said it was stressful, though, trying to balance both his military and civilian commitments. To ease some of the stress, a command master chief whom Behr confided his struggles to convinced him to step away from flying duty and work on the ground. Behr, now a master chief, transitioned to leading Work Center 210, an avionics maintenance and repair shop at NAS Glenview.

It was here that “I really got to experience the rewards of leadership,” Behr said. The command master chief had another phrase for it: “twisting tails.” He also told Behr that he believed Behr could eventually have his job. This came true, when the command master chief suffered a stroke on deployment with VP-90 in Japan. Behr, also in Japan with the squadron, received a field appointment to his mentor’s position.

VP-90 was decommissioned in 1994 in the wake of the Cold War’s end. Behr found himself as a command master chief without a base, but he was unwilling to retire. After some time, patience, and networking, Behr received a call about an open position. The position would take over a “ragtag” reservist unit that would serve aboard the USS Eisenhower. Members of the unit “supported and augmented other jobs similar to theirs” on the carrier. Behr stayed in this leadership position until his retirement in 1999.

Still Behr keeps going, even though he’s officially retired now from both his military and civilian work. He served as state president of the Navy League of the United States. He is a founding member of the Lutheran Military Support Group, which he said is “near and dear” to him because he could blend his “love for faith and love for country together.” He speaks with both Veterans and current Service Members and offers them his support, as many in the military offered their support to him when he was serving.

Referring to his service in the military, “I’ve learned so many things…that’s carried me into life,” Behr said. To this day, he is quick to credit the Navy for everything it taught and gave him.

And he is always willing to share his story with anyone willing to listen. It’s not a way to brag. Rather, he wants to pass on his message of perseverance and hope to others: If he could do it — a simple farm kid from the Midwest — others can, too.

“I want to sit next to the Lord and say, ‘How did you do all this?’” Behr said. “I’m so blessed.”

Endnote:

Behr has shared his story with multiple outlets. In addition to the My Life, My Story program through the VA, Behr has contributed to the following:

Real Life Library: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDTyPquZs3s

Retiree Rebels Kitchen Table Talks: https://retireerebels.com/military-memories-veterans-retirement-ktt-303/

The Bugle, Wisconsin Veterans Museum: https://issuu.com/wisvetsmuseum/docs/the_bugle_fall_2025_vol_32_3

Written by Jenni Mickelson, 2025