AT RANDOM: Ray Hamel

May 26, 2009 06:40 pm

— 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.”
Hamel said a major cause of the defeat of American forces in Vietnam was negative reporting by the national media outlets.
“General Giap, who was the commander of the North Vietnamese forces, said the American forces had them on their backs. They were ready to quit because of the bombing of Hanoi, but anti-war reporting in the press convinced our citizens we were fighting a losing war, and Washington called off the bombing. That gave the communists the break they needed and, man, they took it away from us. They just figured the Americans were going to quit, and if they waited long enough they were going to beat us, and that’s exactly what they did.”
Nguyen Giap was the National Liberation Front’s most senior military commander in the Vietnam War. As a commander, Giap was willing to mix his tactics between classic guerrilla warfare and conventional attacks, as was seen in the 1968 Tet Offensive, according to the History Learning Web site.
Hamel flew missions in Vietnam from 1967 to 1970 and earned the Distinguished Flying Cross and nine air medals for missions he survived. In 1970, he was assigned to Princeton University to close the ROTC detachment there because anti-war professors and press reports convinced the campus administration the military didn’t belong there. Hamel said he was so well-liked by students there that he was voted the second top-ranking instructor at Princeton.
The general in charge of the ROTC program was so impressed with his performance at Princeton he decided to keep Hamel in ROTC, assigning him in 1971 to open the AFROTC detachment at Valdosta State College. The ROTC unit he started at VSC still exists as a premier unit of officer preparation for the United States Air Force.
During that time, Hamel served as chairman of the Americanism Committee and the committee to support veterans in hospitals. He was in the first Elks class initiated into the Elks Club on Baytree Road. He was also active in Kiwanis and headed a church group.
In 1973, following America’s Vietnam withdrawal, he was reassigned to fly a C-130 gunship in Thailand, protecting American assets in Thailand, Laos and Cambodia. A year later, he was assigned to Air University at Maxwell AFB in Montgomery, Ala., “re-bluing commanding officers,” or teaching wing and base commanders how to deal with people and base organizing contingencies.
“All the experience of these guys coming in to take over as wing and base commanders was in flying, and now they had to learn to deal with people and running a base. A base commander is like a mayor of a town. They need people skills.”
He returned to Valdosta in 1977, assigned to Moody AFB as the human relations director on the commander's staff. He became an officer in the Elks Lodge and, later, exalted ruler (president) of the Valdosta Elks. He worked with local agencies, was active in the Chamber of Commerce, and served on several local boards. He retired from the Air Force in 1979, accepting a position as executive director of the Valdosta United Way, a post he held for 14 years. His main job with the United Way was trying to explain to the community what the United Way was all about, what it was doing for the community and why it was so important.
“A lot of folks just think the United Way is looking for money and don’t understand that they’re supporting a lot of agencies, and even more agencies now than when I was there,” he said.
He left the United Way to serve as director of the 2000 Partnership for education reform but said he was relieved of that position in 1995 for suggesting that Valdosta preferred football to good education. That same year he entered Valdosta Technical College to study nursing. He graduated with honors in 1996 and began working at Valdosta State Prison. He said he treated his patients as people, not as prisoners, and they treated him as a friend and professional caretaker. He retired from nursing in 1999 when working the night shift at the prison proved too taxing.
A chronology of Hamel’s life and accomplishments really doesn’t do him justice because he’s one of those people blessed with what we call personality. He’s a natural storyteller and loves a good joke. I lived on Patterson Street for a time and remember him as a crossing guard when Sallas-Mahone school was still located on Patterson Street.
Hamel said former Valdosta police commander Johnny Fason tapped him for the crossing guard position when a veteran crossing guard retired. The corner of Patterson Street and Woodrow Wilson Drive was a busy intersection and Fason wanted someone reliable to direct the traffic and school buses and help the kids across. In typical fashion, Hamel had fun with the job and made friends with those he came in contact with. Someone reported that the crossing guard at that particular intersection was dancing in the street. He was honored as top crossing guard of the year.
Hamel said that in 2007, as an active Catholic at St. John the Evangelist Church, he attended the South Georgia Walk to Emmaus #70, a Protestant weekend similar to the Catholic Cursillo Movement, and was transformed from a practicing Catholic to a committed one. He now attends Mass and reads the scriptures daily and visits people in hospitals and nursing homes. He serves as chairman of the Sickness and Distress Committee of the Elks Lodge and pays daily caring visits to Elks members and their families and folks from his church who need attention.
He said Anita, his wife of 56 years, continues to support his efforts today as she did during his 24 years in the military. She had to be both mom and dad when he was off flying for training or in combat. He said she taught their children to roller skate, ice skate, and play basketball, a sport she excelled at in high school. She taught the boys how to play tennis, baseball and bowling. He said she still bowls even though her average is down a bit. She also loves reading and continues to support him in his ministry to folks who are lonely and handicapped.
Ray and Anita Hamel have four children. Ray Jr. graduated from Valdosta High in 1972 and was the first four-year scholarship student at Valdosta State College. He graduated in 1976, became a professional pilot trainer, and, like his dad, retired as a lieutenant colonel. He resides in Valdosta. Robert was the Junior Naval ROTC commander his senior year at Valdosta High in 1974-75. He graduated with an industrial engineering degree from Georgia Tech in 1979, served as an Air Force civil engineer for 25 years and retired as a lieutenant colonel. He is currently living in Iowa City, Iowa, where he is working on his doctorate in engineering. Daughter Helene is a manager for the Army Air Force Exchange System. She resides in San Antonio, Texas. Roger, the baby of the family, left the military as a staff sergeant and married a girl in San Antonio, Texas, where he remains today, working as a warehouseman.

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