By Natalie De La Garza
Staff Writer
LIMESTONE — Volunteers of the Loring Heritage Center worked closely with former airman Mike Bouchard to plan an extraordinary surprise for his brother and fellow airman David Bouchard, but on the morning of July 14 an unsuspecting David just thought he was going out to spend some time in the woods with his brother to look at some snowmobiling trails slated to be revamped for the winter.
Aroostook Republican photo/Natalie De La Garza
Brothers Mike, center, and David Bouchard smile as they listen to Ray Hildebrand, left, talk about the “Pterodactyl Courier” emblem, the iconic symbol of the B52 that David was crew chief of during his service at the Loring Air Force Base until 1989. The emblem is placed in exact scale on the bomber modle Hildebrand created for David, which is shown at bottom left.
Both Mike and David really enjoy snowmobiling. They both also really enjoy aviation, graduated from Fort Kent High School, served in the Air Force, were stationed at Loring during the same period and were both crew chiefs — Mike with the tankers and David with the bombers.
The Bouchard family has a long history with Loring, starting with their father who removed snow from the runway for 27 winters right up until present, as they have family working at DFAS.
Understandably, Loring symbolizes home for the brothers.
“It’s a home because as long as I can remember, being a child my father worked here and I went all the way through high school and college to end up here at Loring — like my father, like my older brother Jim [who worked in construction and ‘has plenty of footprints’ on the base] and my brother Mike — and my brother-in-law was stationed here, too.”
As the two were out driving from place to place mid-morning on that Sunday, David couldn’t help but notice they were getting closer and closer to the former base — and Mike is known for his surprises.
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| The “Pterodactyl Courier” |
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| Aroostook Republican photo/ Natalie De La Garza David Bouchard, at right, hugs his brother Mike for planning such an elaborate surprise for the former airman as the special reunion coordinated on Sunday through great efforts by volunteers with the Loring Heritage Museum. The Bouchards’ mother, Joella, said that Mike is known for his surprises. |
Fortunately the Land Speed Races were slated to be held at the base that same day — and David figured that was the surprise.
He had no idea that his family, friends and fellow servicemen — in addition to the folks he’d never met who were instrumental to planning the special event — were waiting for him at the Loring Heritage Museum. The museum is not only a vessel through which Loring’s memory is preserved and honored, but also it was a place that David had never been to. In fact, David was under the impression that the museum was housed at a different part of the former base all together — so the two stopped in for a visit on a whim when they coincidentally drove by it.
“When I walked in and I saw all the memorabilia, I thought ‘I’m going to have to spend a little bit of time here!’” David recalled, and the museum volunteers encouraged him to sign their guest book
He bent down to sign in and couldn’t help but notice that the previous page had the signature of Jim Bouchard.
“That’s my brother. I thought ‘what’s Jim doing here?’ I brought my eyes up and there he sat,” David said. “And then I saw my mother, and Maurice, and Herman — and it dawned on me; something has been set up.”
There were smiles and handshakes as David was reunited with fellow servicemen and base personnel he hadn’t seen since leaving Loring in 1989 to pursue a successful career in aviation’s private sector out of Atlanta, but the reunion at the museum was just half of the surprise and the pièce de résistance wasn’t presented until a little while later.
One by one, volunteers brought out two custom air planes — a tanker for Mike and a bomber for David — that former airman and longtime model craftsman Ray Hildebrand of New Sweden spent over 100 hours apiece assembling exactly to detail the very planes the brothers had worked on for all those years, down to the very tail numbers, in what can only be described as a labor of love.
“When they brought those airplanes out, I … I wanted to cry,” David said. “That’s the best thing that’s happened to me in the past 18 months,” he said.
As the planes were being placed before the brothers, Hildebrand explained the significance of some of the details found on the models. Hildebrand said that back during WWII, aircraft started to sport artistic icons especially around the nose. When some of the icons became less than appropriate, the military disbanded the concept of adorning an iconic emblem on individual aircrafts.
“But eventually, they began to realize that pride in what you do often can take a very honorable emblem, and as such, the aircraft that you were mostly associated with also was one of those that, during the Desert Storm time period sported an emblem,” Hildebrand said to David. “Most of these aircraft were many times not known by the tail number, they were known by the emblem,” he said, turning over a framed icon of the B-52 58-0241 “Pterodactyl Courier,” created by airman Harry Page.
“This is what the plan was known by in the history books,” Hildebrand said, as a truly touched smile crept across David’s face as he stared into the familiar emblem.
While Hildebrand spent hundreds on hours assembling the two models, another volunteer had the arduous task of tracking down a photo of the Pterodactyl Courier.
Matt Cole has been volunteering with the museum for years; he’s not a former airman, nor did he work on the base, but he gives countless hours to the museum every year because he enjoys it.
“I was never military and I was never stationed here — I’m just fascinated by the base being here and I love listening to the stories; like this story here,” he said, referring to Mike and David. “That was a perfect scenario, sweet story that you don’t hear every day. And if this place wasn’t here, you wouldn’t hear those stories.”
But to make the Bouchard brothers’ most recent story happen, Cole had to first track down the crucially important emblem to adorn the plane; after phone calls and e-mails, he eventually tracked down Harry Page himself and found an image of the emblem that embodies David’s tenure serving at Loring.
While David thanked his brother for pulling off such an elaborate surprise, Mike sincerely thanked the volunteers of the Heritage Museum for helping orchestrate a day no one in his family will soon forget.
“I just wish their father was here to see this,” said their mother, Joella Paradis from Fort Kent. “Their father, my first husband, he loved Loring. He worked here for so many years and loved every bit of it.”
Over the years, Joella has kept articles written about the fetes her boys were involved with, and her favorite part of the special Sunday surprise was learning even more about her sons.
“Things I never knew, and it’s high time I learned about it!” she said laughing; for example, she never knew that David had been in North Africa.
The reunion and wonderful surprises certainly weren’t the most secretive happenings that Loring has seen in her day, but Heritage Center volunteers are hoping that there won’t be anything secret about the next reunion tentatively slated for July or August of next year to honor 20 years since Loring’s closing.
Additional information about the center, and information about the upcoming reunion will be available through their website at www.loringmilitaryheritagecenter.com.
