Bruce Hedgepeth, MD
Photo by: Kourtney Scoggins
He lived on a small plot of land next door to my grandparents in the high plateau and semi-arid region of central Oregon, in a little pull-off of a town named Tumalo. There was one street and one little store. In the summer it was hot, dry, and dusty with volcanic and basaltic rock contributing to the ever present dust and dirt. In the winter it was cold, dry, and snowy. Sagebrush, Juniper, and Ponderosa pine trees dotted the landscape and contributed to a distinct smell of freshness that was entirely different from the smells of the rainy Willamette Valley of Oregon where I lived.
He was tall and lean, handsome, and wore a cowboy hat when outdoors; which was most of the time. He had a soft shy smile and talked with a real western cowboy twang. He loved to laugh, have fun, and be rowdy in his own quiet way. He wrestled calves to the ground to control them and to keep them still while my grandpa and the other older men reached for the glowing red-hot branding iron positioned in the campfire during cattle branding season. He poured hot liquid lead into molds to make his own bullets for his big shiny pistol that I admired. He shot things with that pistol in the desert and at the remote dump; things like cans, bottles, and jackrabbits. One time he actually had me fire the big magnum loaded pistol and it nearly knocked me onto my 6, or so, year old gluteal region. He just laughed.
He fly fished in the famous Deschutes River that ran behind their property and I watched him gut fish for the first time. And he drove a high-lifted pickup truck with a four-on-the-floor stick shift that seemed very, very tall. That stick shift fascinated me. I always wondered how he knew it was time to shift and what the purpose of doing all of that was. I asked once and he responded by saying something like “ya just know to shift when it’s time.”
That was my Uncle Wayne. He was a pretty special man to me while I was a youngster growing up, and he was a pretty special guy for so many others too. While I didn’t live close to him or see him very often, I considered him a hero and almost larger than life. You see, he was a person that did extraordinary things. He lived more than three hours away from me and in the days of my childhood that was a real road trip. There were no handheld electronics; only back seat skirmishes with siblings and miles upon miles of staring out the window. But more than the distance was the fact that his whole lifestyle, surroundings, and livelihood were very special and different than my own; or anybody else’s for that matter.
He actually did something so unusual that to this day I have never met another one to do what he did; and moreover, many people today don’t even know that the job exists. What he did took immense courage, bravery, passion, and skill. He was a smokejumper. What? Yes, he jumped out of perfectly good airplanes and parachuted into remote, dangerous, and treacherous areas to fight forest fires that could not be reached by any other way, by any other people, or to provide a first responder approach to fire containment. Steep hills and mountains, along with deep ravines and canyons were formidable foes, but apparently no match for him, his crew members, and those like them. I never heard of a job too hard for them. When it came to fires, they would be like the Special Forces of today’s military.
While most of the time the fires that they jumped into and fought were in the remote mountains of Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, Colorado and northern California, he did this in other parts of the country as well; wherever there were inaccessible fire situations. What he did was not ordinary stuff and certainly not what an average person would do. He was part of a small fraternity and a rare breed of men.
As a child, I used to stare and study Uncle Wayne’s photographs that lined the walls of my grandmother’s little house. There were many pictures of the airplanes and crew members all dressed out in their firefighting gear. The men looked young and sturdy, like him. The planes looked like World War II bombers that I had seen in pictures, but now I’m sure that they weren’t. My uncle would occasionally have some gear hanging in the ante room of the house. As I remember, the gear he wore consisted of a big thick overall type of suit with big pockets hanging off of both legs for fire fighting and survival gear. These were the forerunners of today’s cargo pants but the pockets were enormous. There was a big stiff neck guard to protect that area from harm and a helmet with a face cage for protection too. His helmet was white as I remember with a roadrunner decal on the side. There was an orange-red splattering of stuff on his white suit that I asked about once. He told me that it was the flame retardant that they drop from the planes. I tried to imagine being under that “stuff” falling from the sky as I had seen it on the TV news many times. I saw the axes, picks, and shovels that he carried with him up and down those steep mountains. They seemed like feeble instruments against the monster tree and land eating fires that he fought; a modern day David versus Goliath. How could he possibly win against such a deadly and ravenous foe?
He told stories about wildlife being decimated by the fires. He told one story about a crew member who nursed an injured fawn and brought that baby deer back home as a pet after it was left all alone by the fire. I cried. He told stories about jumping into the hills back east and landing in moonshine making country and the very unique people that inhabited that part of the country. They used to be called hillbillies. He said that after the smokejumpers put out the first fire that the ornery people of that region would start fires just to see the men jump out of the planes; they had never seen anything like it before. He told of dangerous situations and close calls, but I can’t really remember him ever talking about losing a man. Either he never lost one or that was something that just wasn’t talked about.
I remember watching him do a practice jump once. I looked up into the sky only to see a speck that was barely identifiable. Then closer and closer this falling object came into view, speeding towards earth; towards me it seemed. Suddenly, and without warning, a long thin line appeared that seemed to flutter endlessly above the falling object. Then a canopy opened up and filled with air as it slowed the object down. Now I could see dangling legs attached to a body, and arms held up holding onto ropes of the parachute. I could then see a head and helmet as he came into closer view. He softly floated to earth, and upon touching down, did some type of roll to break the fall. The person then stood and took off his helmet and it was him, my hero, with a smile. My uncle; my mother’s brother; how could that be? He acted like it was routine and old hat to him. And I’m sure by then that it was. Others parachuted and dropped around him on the practice grounds too. It’s a memory I’ll never forget.
Naturally, I could tell more stories about this extraordinary man, but for now I think that the picture has been framed and partially painted for others to see what a young boy’s true life hero looked like. These types of people help to shape us and help us become the people we are, need to be, or should be. I wish that I would’ve been able to have spent more time with him because I know in my heart that I would have been better off for it.
Thank you Uncle Wayne, and all the rest of you who lay it on the line for the rest of us; past, present, and future
There is a wealth of interesting information on smokejumpers on the web. Take some time to explore it. Here are a few interesting sites for you:
http://www.fs.fed.us/fire/people/smokejumpers/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNuiwawzmbY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RMQ4K8mp2k
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJJt13bpmwU
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