The Observer, September 2005
Volunteer Profile: POVTS member knew danger, now promotes safety
Considering how much time Duane Beland spent in war zones, it’s no wonder he now makes safety a central part of his life.
Today, he’s a member of the council’s Port Operations and Vessel Traffic Systems Committee, which focuses on the safety of oil tanker operations in Prince William Sound. And, as chief of quality control at the 168th Air Refueling Wing at Eielson Air Force Base, his job is making sure the unit’s KC-135 fuel tankers are safe to fly.
PREVENTIVE MAINTENANCE – Duane Beland performs an oil change on the twin V-8 diesel engines on his boat, the Silly Billy. The foot belongs to Duane’s wife, Audra, who took the picture. Photo courtesy of Duane Beland.
But, four decades ago, his circumstances were altogether different. He was crew chief on a Jolly Green Giant rescue helicopter thumping over the jungles of Vietnam.
“I did all kinds of things, from door gunner to hoist operator,” Beland said. “Our mission was to rescue shot-down pilots wherever they were.”
One mission – rescuing a long-range patrol team out of Laos – led to a Silver Star for the one-time Michigan farm boy. Another – retrieving a downed F-105 pilot from Laos – led to a Distinguished Flying Cross, which, according to Army regulations, is awarded “only to recognize single acts of heroism or extraordinary achievement.”
Along the way, Beland also won the Air Medal 14 times, as well as the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry. His helicopter was shot down once, with the result that Beland himself was rescued by a Jolly Green Giant. And he was twice wounded by shrapnel.
Does that make him a hero?
“A hero’s a sandwich,” Beland said. “I had a lot of friends who were heroes and they’re dead.”
Beland finished his Air Force tour in 1969, came home, and went to school in Los Angeles for an aircraft mechanic’s license. Then, in 1971, it was back to Vietnam, this time as a contractor maintaining helicopters for the Army. It wasn’t as dangerous as his first tour, but it was still a war zone.
“We were out of harm’s way, except for being mortared and rocketed at night,” he said.
He left Vietnam in 1972 and, over the next few years, worked in commercial aviation and attended college. It was in 1979 that he got the job that would eventually lead him to a new home in Alaska.
The employer was HighLife Helicopters in Puyallup, Wash., which got a contract to supply helicopters for a federal land survey in Alaska. Beland began spending his summers in the north – in places like Anvik on the Yukon River, Wien Lake near Fairbanks, Umiat on the North Slope, and Kodiak Island.
“I loved the state so much, I decided I wanted to stay up here,” Beland said. “So I quit and went to work for Era Helicopters in Anchorage.”
That didn’t work out exactly as planned. His first assignment was maintaining helicopters for an Era subsidiary in Louisiana. Over the next few years with Era, he spent most of his summers in Alaska and his winters Outside.
In 1986, he joined the Alaska Air National Guard and became a year-around Alaskan, maintaining KC-135 air refueling tankers. In 1990, he married Audra Mailander and in 2002 moved to the Fairbanks area.
In 1995, he got back into air rescue when the Air Guard activated a Jolly Green Giant unit at Eielson. Its main job was covering Interior Alaska, but, in 2003, the unit pulled a 90-day tour in Afghanistan and Beland went along as supervisor of maintenance for the helicopters. He was back in a combat zone, but this time he came home with no shrapnel wounds and no helicopter crashes. And he went back to work for the air refueling unit.
Beland lives in North Pole, some 350 miles from Prince William Sound. But he honeymooned in Valdez after his marriage in 1990 and the Sound has been a second home ever since.
“It’s such a fabulous place,” Beland said. “My wife loves it. She goes boating and fishing down there with me every chance she gets. We put thousands of miles on the truck getting down there 14 times last summer.”
It was his passion for the Sound that led him to volunteer with the citizens’ council. “The oil spill was so shocking, the idea of private citizens having a voice appealed to me strongly.”
The Belands own their own boat, called the Silly Billy. They named it for their calico cat, but later found out the nickname also applies to the man for whom the Sound is named. That Silly Billy was Prince William IV, nephew of the same King George from whom America declared its independence in 1776. The human Prince William was regarded as senile and frivolous, hence the nickname, according to a history of the Sound by Jim and Nancy Lethcoe of Valdez.
Beland got his charter captain’s license in 1999, and now does part-time chartering for salmon and halibut in the Silly Billy.
Recently, he completed a master’s degree in safety. He believes the same safety culture that works in the air works on the water.
“The issues are very parallel between aviation and the marine environment,” he said. “Human factors are the same whether you’re driving a boat or driving an airplane.”