Huey restoration is more than just a hobby
February 21st, 2008, 7:53 pm Hobby Shops
“We were all so young then,” Carroll says. “I’m not sure we really knew what was going on.” Carroll says he was lucky in Vietnam, as fortunate as any 20-year-old kid from Michigan had a right to be, being shipped to an escalating and bloody conflict on the other side of the globe. Carroll served just one year, from 1966 to 1967, as a corporal crew chief in an Army unit stationed away from the most violent clashes of the war. But what he saw, what he felt and the lifelong friends he made there left an indelible mark that Carroll admits he’s still trying to sort out. Perhaps that’s what this helicopter restoration is all about. Now 60 and living on 10 lush, tree-lined acres in Loxahatchee Groves, in Palm Beach County, Carroll has channeled a love for history, for tinkering and his war experiences into rebuilding a Huey helicopter donated to him by the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office about two years ago. In that time, Carroll has replaced worn or missing aluminum panels on the outer shell, installed new windshields and rebuilt almost every moving part, including the top rotor and another on the tail. He has replaced gearboxes and engine cowlings and given the aircraft a new olive-green coat of paint. He has received some cash donations, but most of the money has been his own. Carroll has even stenciled the names of men he served with in his Army unit on the side of the door and put the unit’s image on the nose: the 147th Assault Support Helicopter Company, better known as the “Hillclimbers.” Carroll and fellow Hillclimbers officially dedicated the helicopter at a private ceremony at his home. Carroll wants to make the Huey — one of the iconic images of the Vietnam War — available for public gatherings and veterans ceremonies. But he knows this could rekindle mixed emotions for many veterans who’ve already made, or are still making, peace with their past. “Every April we go to a . . . veterans event in Melbourne and they’ll fly a helicopter like that in,” says Maxwell Nelson, a West Palm Beach resident and president of the Vietnam Veterans Association for Palm Beach County. “Just the sound of it gets your attention, and you start remembering things. It puts everybody in the same frame of mind.” Which can be difficult for some, says veteran David Buckner, president of the American Legion Post 164 in Boynton Beach. “It can bring back some bad memories that have to be faced,” says Buckner, who served 15 months in Vietnam as a propulsion specialist with the Air Force. “But every veteran is going to react differently because every experience in war is different.” Horror and history The Hillclimbers lost men in combat, and Carroll remembers some harrowing experiences. He was part of a rescue operation near the Hillclimbers’ base in the port city of Vung Tau when a hand grenade accidentally detonated inside the cabin of one of the helicopters. The explosion killed two soldiers and blew the legs off two others. Others sustained wounds from the flying shrapnel. “All this blood and all this death, it was horrible,” says Carroll, who watched the carnage from another helicopter. Despite events such as this one, Carroll says he found it easy to open up to family about his tour in Vietnam when the war ended. And that probably made it easier to acquire the Huey when word spread that the Sheriff’s Office had one it was trying to get rid of. The Huey, a gift from a local Marine unit, had been at the sheriff’s firing range out by 20-Mile Bend, serving duty in SWAT training but used primarily as a prop, says Capt. David Sleeth. Carroll says he initially had no interest in the helicopter until a friend looked up its flight records and found it had flown almost 2,000 hours of duty in Vietnam. “That changed everything,” says Carroll, who also collects and restores classic cars and other nostalgic pieces. “So many of these helicopters were left over there or pitched over the side of boats. I knew this was a rarity I had to have.” The Huey now sits on a trailer amid acres of palms and other tropical vegetation in Carroll’s backyard. When the air is humid and the sky is gray, Carroll admits it’s a setting that’s eerily familiar to the one he left 40 years ago. “I just wanted to give this Huey a good home,” he says. “Hopefully, some good will come of it.” The South Florida Sun-Sentinel is a Tribune Publishing newspaper. RHONDA VANOVER/SOUTH FLORIDA SUN-SENTINEL
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