Lost in the Wind

Effort to tell stories of early Native pilots long overdue

by Alex DeMarban

Alaska Native aviation has a rich history, but you probably don't know it.

The state's early Native pilots and their accomplishments have been largely ignored, though several played a vital role after World War II developing Alaska.

A pair of prominent Native aviators could change that.

Their efforts, independent of each other, are happening as a recent wave of Native pilots takes the yoke.

Arctic Transportation Services CEO and president Wilfred "Boyuck" Ryan Jr., an Inupiat who has perhaps the longest record of any Native pilot flying commercially today, wants the Alaska Aviation Heritage Museum to create its first exhibit focusing on early Native aviators.

Museum officials say they're open to the idea but need outside funding to do it.

The most prominent person featured would likely be Capt. Holger "Jorgy" Jorgensen, another Inupiat pilot who is now retired. A new book that tells of his colorful life could also raise awareness about those early pilots.

As a teenager during the 1940s, Jorgensen served in the Alaska Territorial Guard with Ryan's father, Wilfred Ryan Sr. They guarded Alaska's western edge from Japanese invasion, patrolling the coast by dog sled and sounding bays to determine where boats could land.

Jorgensen overcame Native segregation in the Western Alaska communities of Haycock and Nome. In fact, he helped end that segregation as a teen during a movie theater sit-in when he and his Native girlfriend ignored police to sit in the white section.

Jorgensen had a distinguished flying career that began shortly after World War II and lasted close to half a century. The beginning of the end came in 1992, when macular degeneration blinded his right eye. For two years, he hid the problem from his boss at now-defunct Woods Air Service in Palmer, the last of several companies where he worked.

Until a doctor declared him legally blind.

"It was getting pretty hard to line up the runway," he said.

Only then did call it quits.

Great Pilots

"Jorgy," published last May, is one of few books told from a Native pilot's perspective by Eser Republic Press ($25).

At 82, Jorgensen still exudes the confidence that's apparent in many of the book's stories.

The Fairbanks resident says he and his Native peers left almost impeccable records when flying often meant flying between landmarks, despite harsh weather and primitive equipment.

They grew up exploring the country by dog sled, boats or on foot, and could tell the weather from the air by the direction of windrows in the snow

They landed almost anywhere before runways covered the state – touching down on sandy beaches, bumpy tundra or frozen lakes – allowing them to get critical supplies within easy reach of remote work camps.

They knew the weather's tricks, and when to sit out a storm.

"We knew the lay of the land," he says. "That was one of the greatest things for us Native pilots, because in a snowstorm or bad weather, we didn't go up a creek the wrong way. If we started up a creek or down a creek, we knew which way the drainage was to flat ground right away, but there was a lot of pilots came up here (to Alaska) that didn't know that. They just ended up in a place that squeezed them out and they crashed right in the headwaters of some crick or river."

Though there were several Native pilots, Jorgensen can think of only two early pilots involved in a fatal crash. Both died outside Nome in bad weather. Arthur Johnson crashed a medevac flight in bad weather near Nome, killing himself and a passenger. Also, Reggie Joule Sr. was killed in Nome in the spring of 1950, after he was caught in a ground blizzard. Four people died.

Jorgensen's record of some 35,000 flight hours is marred by a single wreck. Early in his career in 1951, while trying to land in Teller, he touched down on a gravel runway built partly over tundra that had softened in the heat. The wheels sank into the mud, bending the propeller when it struck the ground. Jorgesen was unhurt.

"We brought in another prop and fixed the airplane that night," he said.

More common are Jorgensen's perfect landings – stunning nervous co-pilots – in the face of white-out blizzards or engine failures.

In 1993, Jorgensen landed a DC-3 after he'd cut off the left engine because it was overheating, leaving just one as he flew above the sparsely populated Aleutian Islands, delivering 6,500 pounds of dynamite to Adak.

Jorgensen had to land the plane and calm excited co-pilot Greg Haas, who tried bolting out of his seat to pitch out the dynamite so it wouldn't ignite in the crash landing.

Jorgensen ordered him to sit.

"If you'll just listen to me, I've flown these airplanes many years and lost many engines and never crashed and I don't plan on crashing now. Get hold of that map and get me the coordinates for Nikolski and punch them in the GPS."

Haas was shaking so hard, he couldn't get the coordinates. So Jorgesen, with only one good eye, called out the map coordinates for the village of Nikolski, so the co-pilot could punch them into the GPS.

They had eight minutes to land and fortunately, Nikolski was 12 miles away.

Tallying up the distance and time to descend in his head, Jorgensen gave Haas detailed instructions – down to the second – on when he would line up with the runway to land, drop the wheels and order Haas to extend the flaps and lower the speed of the plane.

After everything went like clockwork and the plane touched down perfectly, Haas sat like a statue in his seat.

"I said, ‘You OK?' All he said was, ‘I don't believe it.' "

On another occasion, Jorgensen landed at the village of Savoonga on St. Lawrence Island in the Bering Sea, in a ground blizzard when navigational aids weren't working. Co-pilot Tamar Bailey thought Jorgensen would head back to Nome, but he landed perfectly on a runway that she never even saw.

"He possesses almost a sixth sense with his situational awareness," said Capt. Bailey, the first woman to fly for Northern Air Cargo and now a captain for FedEx. She's also one of a handful of testers who go out for proficiency flights with new pilots, among other duties.

Not One to Brag

Despite the widespread praise Jorgensen gets from a long list of fliers – some call him a legend – he remains humble.

That trait could be why little is known about the Native pilots.

Like Native people in general, they've been reluctant to tout their accomplishments, says Ryan, a captain for 39 years.

"I don't think they're telling their story, because it's the Native way to be silent," he says.

Getting Jorgensen to recount his life for the book was a struggle.

Bill Rimer of Fairbanks, who flew with Jorgensen when they worked at Frontier Flying Service, now Frontier Alaska, started bugging Jorgensen around 1990 to tell his story.

Jorgensen resisted, and for years, a book didn't seem possible.

Finally, Rimer did the legwork to create the book, including finding author Jean Lester of Ester to conduct interviews and narrow down Jorgensen's stories.

Lester had originally planned to write about several early Native pilots, but a grant to pay for the effort never came through.

There was another problem. Lester found almost no information about those early pilots, including at the Elmer E. Rasmuson Library at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

"There really wasn't anything, there weren't any records to research," she says. "The more I got into it, the more I realized how this group of people has been forgotten."

Still Alive to Tell Their Stories

Those early pilots were men including the late Herb and Elmer Nichelson and Ben Ulen. Still living are Al Wright of Fairbanks, George Thiele (whom Jorgensen calls one of the best pilots in the world) and his brother Reinhold Thiele, both of Anchorage. Others included Bill English of Anchorage and Bob Vanderpool of Red Devil.

Most of the pilots started flying in the '40s and '50s, Ryan says. Like Jorgensen, who became an Alaska Scout, the GI Bill often funded their flight training after they served in World War II.

Many flew for Wien Airlines, the state's oldest air carrier until it went out of business in 1984.

During the Cold War, they helped ferry workers and materials for the radar line that protected America from Russian bombers. They also played a key role in making an Alaska an oil-rich state, supplying seismic crew searching for North Slope oil and the men and women who built the trans-Alaska pipeline.

"They pretty much built this country," says Ryan. "They flew the DEW line, they built the infrastructure for the military during the Cold War, and they did it all quietly without fanfare but effectively.

They were out there flying in 50-below zero with radial engines, flying off of 800-foot dirt strips and beaches and they did it safely, with no wrecks or anything. They're the real heroes."

Ryan wants to see those and other pilots honored at the museum with their own wall.

"There were small companies that offered their services to support people, like JenAir out of Barrow (that was operating in the '60s) and Christensen Flying Service and Samuelson Flying Service in the '50s out of Bethel," he said.

Of course, Native pilots weren't the only ones doing the flying, Jorgensen quickly points out. There were plenty of top-notch non-Native pilots.

"It was a lot of people from all over," he says.

Exhibit Funding Needed

Native pilots haven't played a prominent role in exhibits at the aviation museum.

The Hall of Fame features 11 pilots. They're all non-Native.

They all deserve their spots on the wall, said Jorgensen. They were the original aviators from the 1920s and 1930s who pioneered new routes and launched the industry in Alaska. Many were darn good fliers, said Jorgensen.

Some performed important feats. For example, Joe Crosson, the first to fly over Antarctica, delivered diphtheria serum to the Arctic coast to save villages from respiratory disease.

Norm Lagasse, aviation museum director, said Ellen Paneok, the first Native woman Bush pilot who died last year at age 48, is featured at an exhibit at the museum.

An exhibit of Native pilots would be great, he says, but the museum has no money to pay for it. It didn't have any money in its exhibit budget as of spring 2009.

"This would make a good story," he says. "There's no champion for this inside the museum now. It's usually easier if we have champions from outside the museum, because they have passion and often an ability to raise funds."

Alex DeMarban can be reached at 907-348-2444 or 800-770-9830, ext. 444, or .

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