Jim Bedinger
Treasurer, Fleet Week San Diego
Jim Bedinger currently serves as the Director of Military Affairs for USA Federal Credit Union. He has served for six years as board member of the San Diego Fleet Week Foundation and has been treasurer for the past four years. Jim was recently elected as the Vice President of the Fleet Week Foundation. He also serves on the board/committees of the San Diego Military Advisory Council, San Diego Port Propeller Club, the San Diego Armed Services YMCA Management and the San Diego Chamber’s Military Affairs Advisory Committee. Jim is a past president of the San Diego Council of the Navy League where he continues to serve on as the treasurer of Warrior Foundation outreach. Jim serves as a docent with the Torrey Pines Docent Society and is a past president of that organization. He is fond of saying that “I never fail to be re-inspired by the natural beauty whenever I visit the Torrey Pines State Reserve and I remember how these Torrey Pine trees were a constant memory that gave me hope in a land so far away in a war too soon forgotten.”
After high school, Jim entered into the Naval Reserves, where he was the distinguished graduate of his recruit class. While in college, he completed reserve duty in the summers. He was accepted into the Aviation Reserve Officer Candidate program and trained two summers in Pensacola, Florida. He graduated and was commissioned as an Ensign in 1967 and was designated a Naval Flight Officer in May 1968. In November 1969, Jim’s F-4 went down over Laos and he was captured by North Vietnamese Communist forces. By December 1969, Jim was in Hanoi, where he was held prisoner-of-war until his release in 1973 under Operation Homecoming.
He returned to San Diego and continued flying in F-14s or the Navy. He held several positions of increasing responsibility and financial oversight in both the Navy Staff and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He retired as the comptroller of the Naval Training Center San Diego in 1989.
Jim was born during World War II in Philadelphia Pennsylvania. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Union College and a Master of Business Administration degree with honors from San Diego State University. Jim has been married for 41 years to the former Laura Yepez of Patchogue, New York, and they have two adult children.