Richard “Dick” Coffman, age 96, of Miles City

Richard “Dick” Curtis Coffman, age 96, passed away on March 12, 2022, in Miles City, MT.  He was the son of Curt and Winifred (Smith) Coffman.  In 1948, he was married to Jean (Trzcinski) Coffman in Miles City, MT, who preceded him in death there in 2007.

Dick’s mother was diagnosed with terminal tuberculosis when Dick was an infant and he was raised by his paternal uncle Luther Talmadge (“Tam”) and aunt Grace (Callaway) Coffman on their purebred cattle and horse ranch on the Missouri-Kansas border near Nevada, MO.  His father, Curt, was a senior accountant with the Missouri Pacific railroad and during the 1930s depression years was frequently transferred throughout the Midwest between the Cheyenne, Chicago, St. Louis and the Kansas City areas.  Dick’s Aunt Grace died when he was twelve and he and his Uncle Tam, whose “day job” was a corporate representative of Armour and Company, worked the ranch.  In the early and later mid -1930s, Dick and his dad and later his new stepmother, Mildred, (Collins) took vacation trips by train over most of the US, and into Canada and Mexico.  Dick’s elementary school education, with the exception of a years near disastrous attendance at “city” school near Kansas City, was at a one-room country school, a one-hour horseback ride from his home.  High School, as predicted by his Uncle Tam, was a glowing, golden doorway to everything and everywhere: There he found books, fascinating teachers who challenged you and cheered you on, and there were girls everywhere—pretty girls, smart girls- even pretty girls that were smart; great guys that laughed when they bested you and laughed when you bested them.  Life was meat and gravy followed by cherry pie, and he became skinny for the first time in his life.  Immediately following high school, Dick applied for entry into the University of Missouri and simultaneously volunteered into the US Army Ari Corps Cadet Program during the latter portion of World War II.

In the latter portion of 1944, the Army considered that the war in Europe would soon be a US-Allies victory, therefore Dick’s Air Corps Cadet Class was terminated early and he was reassigned to the Army Counterintelligence Corps (CIC) Japanese language and OCS school.

While waiting for call up to the newly being formed language school, Dick met Jean Trzcinski of Miles City who was attending the P.E.O. Sisterhood’s Cottey College for women.  Cottey College was located in Dick’s nearby hometown where Dick’s shiny blue Ford was frequently found thereat whenever there was a college function.  Alternatively, the shiny Ford assisted should there be a young lady from Montana who had time to spare for a coke and a bit of dancing to Big Band music.  Fate and Cupid soon appeared on a collision course; however, the shiny blue Ford survived and was present when their engagement was pronounced.

Upon graduation from language school and OCS, Dick was assigned to military intelligence operations in the South Pacific, however while enroute to that area the Japanese surrendered and he subsequently spent about two years in CIC Intelligence operations during the US military occupation of Japan.  His duties there consisted of counter intelligence activity investigations involving efforts by the Soviet Union to establish the Communist Party into the Japanese labor movement withing the recovering Japanese industry and into the Japanese labor forces contracted for by the US Army of Occupation.

Following his release from regular Army CIC and marriage to Jean, he re-entered graduate school at the University.  While so engaged, the FBI learned in 1950 of his CIC and Japanese language experience, he was invited to accept a commission as a Special Agent in the FBI.

Following his completion of FBI Training School, he was assigned as a Special Agent to the Boston Office of the FBI.  During this approximately two-year period he conducted various criminal, applicant and Internal Security Investigations; he had road trips in his assigned “old” 1948 Buick throughout the New England area that was within the Boston Office jurisdiction.  Just prior to his assignment to the Boston Office, a major robbery had occurred at the Brinks Security Firm’s delivery junction there, which resulted in millions of dollars being stolen.  The FBI investigation of this disaster was within the primary jurisdiction of the FBI, and was not going well; Director J. Edgar Hoover took over personal supervision of the robbery investigation.  Several FBI officials, supervisors and Special Agents were targeted for disciplinary transfers, demotions and there were a couple of dismissals.  Following this shake-up, twenty-three new Agents had been assigned to the Office to carry on the non-Brinks Investigations.  Dick was included among the New Agents so assigned.  Bureau cars were always in short supply on short notice, so Dick’s first arrest was made with the use of his and Jean’s ten-year-old bright red Buick convertible.  (His military deserter arrestee amazed and astounded his cellmates with details of his transportation to the US Commissioners Office following his apprehension.)

On days off Dick and Jean toured and enjoyed Boston and New England’s historic sites and favored the areas of excellent seafood establishments.  During one of Dick’s Road trips to New England, Jean was selected to work as an extra in a major scene in the making of a Preminger directed movie in Boston of a closed FBI espionage case.  The movie titled “Walk East on Beacon” was the first one of which Director Hoover had approved for FBI assistance.

Of this Boston New Agent group after about two years, Dick was re-assigned in 1952 to the Washington D.C. headquarters area of investigations and received assignments of various national cases involving investigation matters of Applicant, Internal Security, Domestic Security Matters, Hate Groups and Racial Affairs.  Also included among these investigative matters were the teaching of classes of Law Enforcement Photographic techniques to selected local and national law enforcement personnel, and participation in Soviet espionage surveillances.  He further engaged as an under-cover news photographer of massive mobs who were threatening various national interests and of the vandalizing of national government buildings and monuments.  With other agents, he filmed and produced a highly classified training film, and with fellow Special Agent pilots, initiated the foundation of FBI aerial surveillance techniques.  Included during these activities was the development of confidential informants, two of whom brought him personal congratulations of Director Hoover.  This assignment period from 1952 through mid-1976 saw the continued deep penetration by the Soviet Union’s Marxist and Communist Party influences into the USA’s national interest of US Governmental, scientific, civil, and cultural societies.  This period was highlighted by the FBI break-up of major Soviet Spy rings, prosecution and conviction of domestic spy rings, FBI activities brought about by the Cuban Missile Crisis and the assignations of President John Kennedy, Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.  This period saw generational changes within the American culture being brought about and developed by the “Progressives” of America’s political left in their co-oping of the ill-devised education standards of American youth.  These leftist efforts influenced other naïve US personages who subsequently became imbedded into the unionized K-12 or tenured university educational disciplines; some major unions were also so politicalized as were various civic structures of the changing American culture.

During this period, Jean, after graduating from cub-scout den-mothership of their son and daughter, found time to get her pilots license and to become a real-estate agent.  These activities led to membership in the “Ninety-nines”, the Amelia Earhart organization of women pilots, and to fly with some of Miss Earhart’s still active contemporaries.  She also got to fly with some of the members of the Women’s Air Service Pilots (WASP), the World War Two group of women pilots, who during the war had replaced scarce pilots for the testing and delivery of new aircraft for the military.  She was able to participate in some invited VIP tours of the Kennedy White House of noted pilots.

Mixed in these busy times on weekends were Dick and Jean’s participation in racing and rallying of European sports cars, and in their various flying activities.

The death of Director Hoover resulted in deeper politicization of the Department of Justice which was followed by several disastrous Presidential appointments of Directors of the FBI.  Agents serving under the late Director Hoover were directed to retire upon reaching the age of fifty-five, as Congress and the Department of Justice desired no more Directors of FBI executives in the likes of Director Hoover.  Dick and Jean soon found the Washington D.C. area becoming intolerable; Dick sought a transfer “as far West as I can get”.

Fortunately, for them, the Salt Lake City Office had a major soviet espionage case in operation and a significant Communist Party needing attention.  There Dick soon determined that the intelligence service of Red China was establishing undercover intelligence agents and other undercover sources of information within various Utah universities and Utah defense industries holding sensitive classified contracts with the federal government.  Jean having gotten her pilot’s license in Virginia and becoming an accomplished pilot, flew their aircraft to the high altitude of Utah.  While there, they up-graded their aircraft to one which could better handle the higher elevations, and they then explored the skies of Utah, Idaho, Nevada and Montana.  They arranged and participated in air shows sponsored by the Confederate Air Force (CAF) organization in Nevada and Utah, which restored and flew most of the World War II military line aircraft.  At the Fiftieth anniversary of the Atom Bomb of Japan held at the historic former B-29 training base at Wendover Utah, Dick and Jean met and dined with Colonel Tibbets and surviving members of the crews of B-29s that Atom Bombed Japan.  Jean got to be checked out in several WW2 US advanced trainers and fighters and had a couple of hours training in the famous Boeing B-17 four-engine bomber.

Politically mandated retirement upon reaching age fifty-five and suddenly being shoved aside into the backwaters of “civilian” life was not a welcomed experience.  Within a few months, Dick joined a company established by retired FBI and Secret Service agents that contracted to provide individual background investigations for US Government agencies of personnel needing security clearances to work in government agencies and defense industries that were involved in classified endeavors.  In order to do such work Dick had to form his own private security company; perhaps, not the most favored type of work, but it kept him in contact with his former contacts, and kept his security clearance current.  The work paid his taxes, provided for a well-equipped GM SUV, a new Cadillac for Jean now and then and kept the tanks of their new aircraft topped up.  His area of Utah, Nevada, southern Wyoming and the western side of the Rocky Mountains offered welcomed road trips, all sidelined with fascinating history.  Also, the work paid for a couple of trips to the ex-FBI Agent’s Society Conventions held in Hawaii and two historic ocean liner cruises around all of the Hawaiian Islands.  Dick was not enthusiastic about the Hawaiian life-style; however, as when standing in the memorial above the sunken USS Arizona, which entombed two of his cousins, and watching the still leaking fuel oil from the Arizona slowly bubble to the surface, he found the Islands depressing.  When visiting the Honolulu Punchbowl’s military cemetery, where commemorative monuments to the eighteen thousand Pacific War MIAs and other war dead were inscribed, while impressive, but that also was depressing.  Several of his close high school friends had made their ultimate sacrifice in the Pacific War, and one was carried among the MIAs.

Twenty years in Utah had been rewarding and interesting, but it was not Montana.  By the mid-1990s, Dick and Jean began to fly their aircraft into the Big Sky of Montana and looking.  Jean picked a spot that would do and built a home in Miles City.  No trailer could be found that would transport their “dream home” Jean had designed in Salt Lake, but Montana it had to be, and Miles City of course.  Their move from Salt Lake to Montana would have impressed the G-2 of General Patton’s Third Army.  Only the kitchen sink failed to make the trip.

Their skies of Montana were not to be.  Jean passed away a few short years after the move.  A few years after Jean’s death, Dick published a book, “Eyewitness to J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI”.

Dick is survived by a son, Bruce (Lisa) of Santa Barbara, CA, granddaughter Kimberly Coffman, a research scientist at the University of Utah, Salt Lake City.  A daughter, Lee Gray, Dale City, VA, and a granddaughter Jessica Gray, a women’s fashion designer in New York City.

Desired memorial contributions may be made to either the Society of Former Special Agents of the FBI Foundation, Dumfries, VA or charity of choice.

Service Schedule

Family to Receive Friends

4:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m.

Tuesday March 22, 2022

Stevenson & Sons Funeral Home

1717 Main Street

Miles City, Montana 59301

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Rosary Service

6:00 p.m.

Tuesday March 22, 2022

Stevenson & Sons Funeral Home

1717 Main Street

Miles City, Montana 59301

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Funeral Mass

10:00 a.m.

Wednesday March 23, 2022

Sacred Heart Catholic Church

120 North Montana Ave.

Miles City, Montana 59301

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Interment with Full Military Honors

Wednesday March 23, 2022

Custer County Cemetery

Miles City, Montana 59301

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