Seeley Lake was home base for military family

SEELEY LAKE – Ron Talcott joined the military with a clear understanding of what that decision entailed. He had the experience of his grandfather, who served in the United States Army, and his father, who served during World War II, to draw on. When he applied to and received an appointment to the Air Force Academy, his goals were to receive a good education and retire with skills that would translate into a civilian career. Understanding that military life would require his family to move many times, Talcott balanced that uncertainty by establishing a permanent home base for his family in Seeley Lake.

Talcott's roots in Seeley Lake go back to his childhood when he spent summers visiting his grandparents at their cabin on Placid Lake. His love of the area prompted him to choose it as the place to which his family would always return. In 1973 he purchased two lots by the Seeley Lake airport. It took three years to pay them off and then he built his family a home.

In the meantime, the Air Force trained Talcott to be a pilot. Ranked ninth among his 60 classmates, Talcott got ninth choice of what aircraft he wanted to fly. He chose a KC-135 jet refueler for practical reasons-it had more headroom. He was 6 feet, 3 inches tall, and his head scraped the top of the canopy in the more confining fighter planes.

Talcott said he refueled all kinds of airplanes. Some of the most dramatic incidents occurred when he was on temporary duty in Southeast Asia, refueling fighter pilots going into Vietnam.

He said, "Sometimes people needed to be refueled because their plane had been shot up and was leaking fuel. So we gave them fuel to get back to their base or at least over friendly territory so if they had to bail out they weren't captured by the enemy."

Practicality also played a part when he again had an opportunity to choose which type of plane he wanted to fly. He opted for the C-130 transport. Though the transport planes flew missions in Vietnam, they were officially based in Taiwan. Their mission schedule sent them into Vietnam on a rotation of two weeks in, three days out. Talcott was able to move his wife and two sons, ages 2 and 3, to Taiwan and that rotation allowed him to see them often during the two years he was stationed there.

Talcott's was the only unit flying C-130s when the Paris Peace Accords were signed. At the time, the North Vietnamese held around 500 American prisoners of war. The U.S. and South Vietnam forces held 50,000 Viet Cong prisoners. According to the agreement, for every 110 American POWs freed, 10,000 Viet Cong would be released. Talcott's unit helped carry out the repatriation.

The Viet Cong POWs were loaded into the C-130 and flown to designated places throughout Vietnam. The U.S. furnished the POWs with t-shirts and shorts as well as flip-flops made from recycled tires and inner tubes. Talcott said the drop-offs were brief. He didn't even shut the engines off, simply lowered the ramp for the prisoners' egress.

According to Talcott, "When the [Viet Cong prisoners] were getting ready to walk off the back of the airplane, they could see tables were all set up and their people were ready to receive them. [The prisoners] took everything off, so that they were naked. The purpose was to show loyalty to their cause and their dislike of us. Anything that was given to them from the U.S. was left behind. The back of the airplane was strewn with shorts and shirts and sandals. Their people had clothes for them."

Talcott also participated in the repatriation of the American POWs. He considers it his most memorable experience in Southeast Asia.

"You've heard people say you could feel the emotion in the air? That was one time in my life when I could feel it," Talcott said. "I went to the back of my airplane to get ready to load [the POWs]. Two trucks drove up, each carrying 50 men. They jumped off the trucks and marched onto my airplane. And you could feel - I mean just feel it like it was electricity - the emotions that they were experiencing."

After the war, the Air Force returned Talcott to the United States and sent him to Pennsylvania State University where he got a master's degree in Business Administration, specializing in management and human relations. He then served three years at the Air Force Command Headquarters, Transport Plane Division.

Talcott's last assignment was in Tacoma, Washington, where he retired in 1986. The day after he retired, he started working for The Boeing Company. They recognized the value of his advanced education and his many hours of experience with their airplanes.

Calling his Boeing career "a wonderful opportunity to fly new airplanes and fly around the world and teach people from all over the world," Talcott said, "I learned a lot about how the world is put together and what different countries are like."

During his 35-year career at Boeing, the Talcotts lived in Washington but visited Seeley Lake often. In fact, they and their children and grandchildren have expanded their housing in the area to include the "in-laws and the outlaws."

Talcott's wife Gigi counts six generations of Talcotts who have looked upon Seeley Lake as their touchstone base.

"[Seeley Lake] has always been so welcoming and the setting is so magnificent," she said. "If you have the luxury of having a place there that you can come to in the summers and for Christmas, it's a blessing.

Looking back on what he considers the fortuitous crossroads in his life, Talcott said, "I am a man of Faith and so I look at that - that I got opportunities often - as God's hand."