Flying for the public good
In 43 years in the Air Force—with the Air National Guard, on active duty as a fighter pilot—Gene Hartman served across the United States and in Japan, Thailand, the Philippines, and Taiwan before retiring as a colonel.
It was a career he said he “enjoyed very much,” but Hartman would go on to find fulfillment, too, in the missions he flew for the Civil Air Patrol (CAP) following Hurricane Katrina.
Hartman was based for a month in Hattiesburg, Miss., beginning just a week after the massive storm hit the Gulf of Mexico on Aug. 28, 2005. Hartman and his team made several daily flights to New Orleans to assist in the post-Katrina recovery efforts, piloting the CAP’s eight general aviation planes, including Cessna 206s and Gippsland GA8s. They brought water, newspapers, and other supplies to affected residents. They also transported members of the media and relief personnel, especially officials of the Army Corps of Engineers who needed to examine the state of area bridges and roads.
Hartman called the destruction and the conditions he witnessed “very difficult for the [residents] to cope with.” He viewed his role, he said, as a mission, as a “job … that had to be done for the community.”
“It was something I volunteered to do,” Hartman explained. “If you volunteer for something, you do whatever the job requires you to do. I’m retired, so it’s easy for me. A lot of people with [another] job could only stay four [to] five days and had to be back at their company.”
Hartman has used GA airplanes often in his CAP volunteer work, including search-and-rescue flights to locate airplanes that disappeared, radar calibration flights, and flying Environmental Protection Agency officials to do imaging photographs of flooded areas in Missouri.
Hartman has been a devoted CAP member for 38 years, serving primarily in the Washington, D.C., area. He became involved with the group beginning in 1971 after completing the Air Force’s Air Command and Staff College in Alabama, and facing a transfer to Hawaii. Hartman wanted to find an activity that appealed to his 14-year-old son Randy, and suggested the CAP. Randy went on to become a pilot and now is an engineer in Minnesota.
An adjunct to the Air Force, CAP has more than 1,500 chapters, known as units, across the country. CAP members perform such community services as lending a hand following natural disasters, laying wreaths on the graves of those killed in uniform, and volunteering at such events as airshows and presidential inaugurations. Its youth cadet programs bring the excitement of flight and aerospace to teenagers and educate them on conducting search-and-rescue missions. In the last few years, three of the National Flight Academy cadets whom Hartman taught to fly earned their private pilot certificate.
“Leadership is one of the main things we try to instill in them,” he said. “The cadet program is probably the most important thing we do, in my mind. Seeing them do it and move on is rewarding.”
A former wing and region commander for CAP’s Middle East (Washington) division, Hartman now serves as its homeland security officer and advanced technology leader. He recently received the FAA’s Wright Brothers Master Pilot Award, honoring those with 50 or more consecutive years of safe flight operations.
Hartman flies his Cessna 337 when he can, but with all his activities, he said, “it’s not often enough.” Of his more than half-century of flight, Hartman said, “I’ve had a good career and a good life.”
He added: “I put in about 10 hours a day for Civil Air Patrol doing something. Everything we do is important.”
—By Hillel Kuttler
from GA serves America
http://gaservesamerica.com/stories/091209hartman.html?WT.mc_id=091211epilot&WT.mc_sect=gasa
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