By Matt Flumerfelt

The Valdosta Daily Times

The French philosopher Jean Paul Sartre believed we should be engaged, engaged in our community, engaged in our world, engaged trying to change things for the better. Ray Hamel fits that description, engaged and engaging. Hamel is one of those people who makes the most of the opportunities he's been given and even more of the ones he wasn't.

Hamel is retired from active life now, but he doesn’t sit around reflecting on the past. He stays busy. He exercises religiously at the YMCA. Doctors discovered late in his life that he has scoliosis, i.e. curvature of the spine. He said the military never caught it and that he probably had no business pulling G’s behind the stick of a fighter jet. When he first started going to a chiropractor, the doctor predicted he’d be in a wheelchair within a few years. It didn’t happen. Hamel said his fitness routine is largely responsible for his continued mobility.

Hamel was born in Laconia, N.H., in 1932. His father was a meat cutter. Since they lived in a resort area, folks from New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Pennsylvania who vacationed in the Lakes Region came to whatever grocery store he was employed in to buy their meats. Hamel said the local stores competed for his services in their meat departments.

Hamel’s mother was a stay-at-home mom to be there for him and his younger brother. He said she kept them in line, helped them with homework, and taught them how to do the important things around the house. She taught them to cook, clean up after themselves, how to sew, do laundry, and iron their clothes. She was also their tutor for most of their studies and must have done a good job, he said, because he and his brother both graduated at the top of their elementary school classes. She taught them their prayers and kept them active in church. He said those lessons still serve him well today.

“All in all, my younger years were pretty happy ones. We all helped each other, no doors had to be locked on homes or cars, and listening to the radio or going to the movies was my form of entertainment,” he said.

Hamel enjoyed skiing and skating in the winter but didn’t enjoy as much the exercise he got shoveling snow or plodding to school in snow knee-high or higher. Like many kids in the northern states, he used to love making tunnels in the huge snow banks created by the plows that cleared roads and sidewalks. The lakes around his hometown provided some great summer fun, he said.

“Since I grew up in the depression years, I walked everywhere until I earned enough money delivering newspapers to buy a used bicycle for neater transportation. I used my bike to go to high school during the fall and some of spring, and I thumbed my way to college some 50 miles away from home.”

In 1954 he graduated with honors from the University of New Hampshire with a pre-med degree. He was accepted into the Boston University School of Medicine but couldn't raise the money to attend. He also graduated at the top of his class in the Air Force ROTC, and since no down payment was required, he accepted a commission as a second lieutenant to attend pilot training. Hamel bought his first used car in 1955 to travel from New Hampshire to Texas to report for duty with the Air Force. He entered pilot training class, earning his wings in 1956. He was a pilot for most of his 24-year Air Force career.

After training, he flew B-47’s and B-52’s in Nebraska and Oklahoma. In 1963, Hamel was selected to be a Combat Crew Commander in charge of 10 nuclear warhead Minuteman missiles at Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota. He and his deputy would sit in the capsule, he said, and coordinate with Strategic Air Command headquarters “in case something would happen and we had to let the missiles go.” They also monitored the missiles because, like any other machine, they required maintenance and monitoring to remain operational. Hamel said he was lucky enough to test fire a missile one time, with the warhead removed, of course.

“We were working with ABC News and so they were monitoring the thing. They came into the capsule with me and watched me do all the stuff, working the dials and the key turning.”

He earned an MBA degree from Ohio State University while stationed in South Dakota in conjunction with his missile and flying duties. After working as a missile crew commander, he served in Vietnam from 1967 to 1970.

“I was officially stationed in Okinawa. I was part of President Johnson’s Hidden Force. I was in Okinawa, but I spent most of my time in Vietnam. I was flying C130’s, transporting cargo and passengers. We were flying missions, flying the Vietnamese people and the American forces from base to base, trying to keep the communists from taking over South Vietnam.”