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| Ex-President helps honor family of lost Guardsman Wednesday, January 20, 2010 Carolea Hassard
The wife and daughters of Texas National Guard SSgt. Luke Mason of Springtown formally honored him in a memorial service held about a year after his death.
The service, held Sept. 13, 2009, also honored the other six men who lost their lives in a Chinook helicopter crash Sept. 17, 2008 in Iraq.
Mason’s wife, Melanie, and her four children, Nikki, Megan, Sarah and Jamie, met former President George W. Bush that day. Melanie declined an Epigraph interview about the event, but the staff at Watson Elementary, where she volunteers and where her youngest daughter attends school, thought it should be recognized. “She’s just a real private person,” said Watson parent liaison Laura Nettleton, “but we thought it was important.”
Melanie did agree to have the photo of her family with Bush, now a Dallas resident, published, Nettleton added. According to a Patriot Guard Riders web posting, an interment ceremony for the men was held at DFW National Cemetery, followed by a memorial service at the 2nd Battalion 149th Aviation Regiment Armory in Grand Prairie. A park on the armory grounds honors the memory of the “Red River 44” crew, the site added. The men who lost their lives included Mason, 37; 1st Lt. Robert Vallejo, 28, from Richland Hills; Warrant Officer Corry Ardel Edwards, 38, from Kennedale; 1st Sgt. Julio Cesar Ordonez, 54, of San Antonio; and three from the Oklahoma National Guard, including Chief Warrant Officer Brady Rudolf, 37, of Oklahoma City; Sgt. Daniel Eshbaugh, 43, of Norman; and Cpl. Michael Thompson, 23, of Harrah. First indications were the helicopter crashed due to equipment malfunction. However, a report from another member of the 2-149th indicated that the accident may have been caused by the pilot’s disorientation. SSgt. Joseph F. Keyes wrote an account of the accident which appears at www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=96589287267. The essay, entitled “The Longest Flight,” is dated July 1, 2009. The mission was to “fly four CH-47D Chinook helicopters from Udari, Kuwait, to Balad, Iraq. We were the last of twelve Chinooks scheduled to make the trip and were eager to get going, but weather had kept us in Kuwait for nearly a week longer than the rest of the company,” Keyes wrote. Keyes was riding in the second helicopter, dubbed Red River 45, while the third helicopter was Red River 44. It was nearly 11:30 p.m. when the four helicopters took off. “...it was a dark night,” he wrote. “The horizon was becoming more difficult to make out; the ground was blending with the sky in a greenish haze. At one point, I experienced a brief moment of spatial disorientation....” About 20 minutes into the flight, “the right side of the aircraft lit up in my goggles, nearly causing them to shut down. I thought one of our flares had gone off, only it was much brighter,” he wrote. Another crew member who was watching the helicopters behind him raised the alarm that the third helicopter had gone down. At this point, Keyes’ own pilot was experiencing “spatial disorientation.” “I felt the aircraft lurch into a turn and go nose down. I immediately came off of my gun, flipped up my goggles and searched the instruments,” Keyes wrote. “‘You are in a nose down right turn, pull up and turn left,’ I announced after finding the attitude indicator (which informs the pilot of his orientation relative to the earth). “I felt the nose come up, but I felt us go farther into a left turn. ‘Correction, you are in a left turn. Come right, come right,’ I yelled. The pilot responded at once and the aircraft leveled off.” Keyes’ and the other two helicopters made it to ground safely. “My friends are gone and I tell this story with a heart full of sorrow but also filled with a hope that I can help prevent something like this from happening again,” Keyes wrote. “Spatial disorientation is ... a very real and potentially deadly phenomenon.... Enlisted crewmembers should know their helicopter’s instruments and be available to help their pilots. “My understanding of the attitude indicator, altimeters and airspeed saved my life. Get with your pilots and have them teach you how to read these instruments and where they are located.” Keyes wrote. |
