David L. Lichtenfeld

 

• FBI Special Agent

 

Dave was born on November 27, 1935 in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, the first child born to attorney Samuel L. and Sarah Lichtenfeld. He attended Upper Darby High School and Gettysburg College and played baseball and football.

The Darby High School Royals football team was dismal, losing all of their games in 1948. As a freshman, Dave played varsity in 1949, and the team won five of nine games. By 1952, they were undefeated. At one point he was honored by a local radio station for having scored eight of the team’s last nine touchdowns and being the highest scoring player in all of Delaware County. A couple of nights later, he took a game opening kickoff back 96 yards for another touchdown. At the end of the season, he was named the “All Delco [Delaware County] 1st Team” halfback and “All Pennsylvania 2nd Team.” Fifteen years later, newspapers were still talking about “That Fabulous ’52 Team” and about Dave personally.

Dave played halfback and extra-point kicker on the Gettysburg Bullets freshman team. They also went undefeated and he was voted team captain and most valuable player. As a sophomore, he played halfback and kicker on varsity, and even with a broken wrist for half the season he scored 72 points. He was the fullback and kicker as a junior, and halfback and kicker as a senior.

Also, while at Gettysburg College, he performed in several ad hoc troupes in musical variety shows as a comedian and/or musical trickster. Comedy and flawlessly singing old songs were talents he would manifest the rest of his life. His athleticism would continue even to his retirement as he walked off the stage, and down the steps – on his hands!

On September 17, 1957, Dave joined the United States Army and was assigned to the highly decorated 123rd Signal Battalion of the 3rd Infantry Division and posted in Wurzburg, Germany during the Cold War. Specialist 4th Class Lichtenfeld was honorably discharged on September 4, 1959.

Dave joined the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 1969 as a Special Agent, a vocation of which he was singularly proud. His wall at home was a virtual museum of his activities and accomplishments in the FBI and he often regaled any assemblage about his having a photograph on his wall of him shaking hands with J. Edgar Hoover – followed, of course, with the imperative joke. His museum also included an award for having shot a “Possible,” or a perfect score, during firearms qualification. By 1968 he was assigned to the Cincinnati Field Office and was involved in several major investigations. By 1982 he was a spokesman for the Bureau in Cincinnati. He was also the training coordinator for local law enforcement officers and the FBI National Academy and became very much an advocate of collaboration between local and federal law enforcement. Special Agent Lichtenfeld retired in 1992, with 25 years of fulltime service to his country.

He spent the last 34 years serving his community. A man wholly generous with his time, he spent most of his time at home reading of the tragedies of the Holocaust and parlayed those into his work as a “highly valued” volunteer docent for 13½ years at the Holocaust Museum. For 33 years, every Tuesday, he would read books and manuals to a blind lady, and we can only imagine the comedic editorial license he would take to leave her in stitches. For at least ten years, he volunteered at the Playhouse in the Park interpreting for the blind, lending detail to the performance, a task that took preparation and skill. He pushed a book, magazine, and candy cart around Jewish Hospital, for about 15 years instructed senior citizens in the hazards of fraud for ProSeniors, Inc.’s Ohio Senior Medicare Patrol, and participated in Big Brothers Big Sisters of Greater Cincinnati.

With his donation of time, Special Agent Lichtenfeld never strayed far from his law enforcement roots. He was an active member of the FBI Retired Agents Association. While serving in the FBI and long after, he acted as master of ceremonies at numerous law enforcement-related gatherings well into his 80s and became legendary with his antics and sometimes edgy humor. He was also highly active in the Hamilton County Police Association and a fixture at every monthly meeting, reading off the numbers for door prizes. He was also a member of The 100 Club, a group of law enforcement officers, each of whom donate $100 annually to assure that families of officers killed in the line of duty are taken care of financially before, during, and after their funerals, which evolved into The Shield, of which he was also a member.

Almost as soon as the Greater Cincinnati Police Historical Society was formed, Special Agent Lichtenfeld was a part of it. When the Police Museum first opened, he provided some of his artifacts for the FBI Display. When the Memorial Committee found and reported on the death of Special Agent Nelson Klein and subsequently Klein’s grave marker was found toppled and broken, he spearheaded a mission to accumulate sufficient funding to repair and improve it and then to have an assortment of law enforcement officials attend a rededication ceremony, complete with the tradition FBI cognac toast. Due to these efforts, the Director of the FBI required every field office in the country to inspect the graves of their fallen agents and allowed donated to the Police Museum an FBI-issued Thompson Submachinegun and one of two sets of  life-size cutouts of the several “Public Enemies No. 1.” The other set is on display at the FBI Museum in Quantico. Special Agent Lichtenfeld continued working every Saturday into his 91st year. When he could no longer drive himself, one of his daughters brought him to the Museum and he would stop at McDonalds and bring everyone lunch. Then, Carol Murrish, daughter of FBI Special Agent E. Clark Murrish, would pick him up, take him to the Boathouse, then home. Even while under hospice care, he convinced one of his daughters to bring him to the Museum.

In the last several years, Special Agent Lichtenfeld had numerous skeletal and medical problems, sometimes resulting in multiple surgeries and weeks’ stays in Jewish Hospital. During those years, he was tended to by his daughters and Carol. Special Agent Lichtenfeld died while under hospice care in his assisted living apartment on June 1, 2026 at the age of 90.

He was so admired that, even at the age of 90, family, FBI and law enforcement employees, and others nearly filled the Weil Kahn temple for his visitation and services.

_{© 2026 – All rights reserved to LT Stephen R. Kramer RET and the Greater Cincinnati Police Museum}