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Chief Warrant Officer Four Marion “Sonny” Ziegler Passes Away at Age 78

CWO4 "Sonny" Ziegler
M. Ziegler, III First Platoon Leader
PT Ziegler in Mission Planning on Board USS Ranger, 1969

Chief Warrant Officer Four (Ret) Marion “Sonny” Ziegler, of Melbourne, Florida, passed away on 23 September 2024. 

Sonny was born in 1945, grew up in Buzzards Bay, Massachusetts, and graduated from Bourne High School. He enlisted in the U.S. Navy in September 1963 and became a Photographic Intelligenceman (PT). When he was a PT3 stationed at Naval Air Station Patuxent, Maryland, he was selected to drive Massachusetts Governor John A. Volpe in the 1965 Presidential Inauguration Parade. He deployed in September 1966 to Military Assistance Command Vietnam, Combined Intelligence Center Vietnam, at Tan Sanot Air Force Base. His first assignment was in the map/chart library, and he was later assigned to the photo interpretation shop. 

As a PT2, he was assigned to the USS Ranger (CV-61) and deployed with the carrier for its 1969 Westpac Cruise, during which the Carrier Task Group responded to the Northern Vietnamese shootdown of a U.S. Navy EC-121 in the Gulf of Tonkin. 

Sonny became an Intelligence Specialist in 1975 and later served as the leading chief petty officer on the USS America (CV-66). He credits that tour as a steppingstone to being commissioned in 1978 as a warrant officer - Photographic Intelligence Technician. In 1983, Sonny was one of the first warrant officers assigned as an F-14 Tomcat Tactical Airborne Reconnaissance Pod System (TARPS) intelligence officer with VF-143’s Pukin’ Dogs at Naval Air Station Oceana, Virginia. 

After 23 years of service, Sonny retired from the Navy in 1986 as a CWO4 and started a second career with Lockheed-Martin, where he worked for 17 years. In 1989, he received a Bachelor of Science in Sociology from St. Leo College Extension. He retired in Melbourne, Florida, where he was active in the Satellite Beach Lions Club and Brevard County Zoo volunteer program. On the way to the local golf course, he could be spotted in his bright yellow Ford Mustang.  

Ironically, Sonny sent a BZ to the READBOOK editor in April 2024. His email was published in the “Letters to the Editor” section of the Fall/Winter 2024 issue, and sadly, he never lived to see it in print.