Jack McPhee's last flight
Maine's best pilot died doing what he loved best
Copyright © 2003 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc.
No one wants to die, but if he had to choose the method, Jack McPhee would have chosen to fall from the sky. But the state was diminished and saddened when he did just that, a couple of weeks ago.
Jack was a legendary warden pilot. After he retired from the Warden Service, he kept right on flying — as a contract pilot on wildlife projects and as proprietor of Macannamac Camps on Haymock Lake in the Allagash Region.
I was told that he had spent over 20,000 hours in the air. That's amazing — more than 2 years — 24 hours a day, seven days a week — in the air! And he was, by far, the most skilled pilot I was privileged to know. Indeed, he was without doubt one of the best pilots this state has ever produced.
The initial news report simply stated that his plane had clipped a tree and crashed. That was unbelievable to all who knew him. He was far too cautious to make a mistake like that. Later, we learned he'd had a heart problem — probably a heart attack.
The man who saved so many lives in his north woods, any-weather, tree top search and rescue missions, met his own death in those same woods.
At the State of Maine Sportsman's Show in April at the Augusta Civic Center, Jack scheduled me to fly with him in June when I got to my north woods camp. I am very glad that I took the time to visit with him twice in April at two sportsmen's shows.
His given name was John and he was sometimes confused for the writer John McPhee. The two became friends, and the writer John McPhee penned a memorable story about the pilot John McPhee called "North of the C.P. Line." You can find the story in McPhee's book, "Table of Contents," published by The Noonday Press in 1980.
I first learned Jack's background from that story.
"As an undergraduate at the University of Maine, in Orono, he had studied electrical engineering, but had dropped it like a hot wire after the thought crossed his mind that an electrical engineer would almost surely have to live in a city," wrote McPhee of McPhee. "Shifting into a combination of mathematics, science, and English, he earned his bachelor's degree in education. ('I knew that as a teacher I could live in Maine and survive. I did not want to leave the state of Maine').
"To fly in military service, he considered first the Air Force and then the Marines, but their sort of flying would not be relevant in civil aviation and would thus be useless in Maine. In the Army, he could fly Cessnas, de Havilland Beavers — the bush aircraft of the North. So he flew in the Army.
"Afterward, he tried teaching school for a time in Bath, on the Kennebec estuary. ('I liked the teaching but not the indoor environment. I had to get outdoors').
He found a way to spend the rest of his life outdoors. McPhee woke me up on our first encounter. Sound asleep in my camp on Sourdahunk Lake, the drone of a plane awakened me. The plane landed and taxied in to pick up students who were staying at a camp next to mine, for a flight to track radio-collared pine martin.
I went to the shore to lodge a complaint about the noise, and Jack jumped off a pontoon to shake my hand and introduce himself. I quickly forgot my complaint. We struck up an immediate friendship. He was a very likeable man, a practiced listener who always seemed genuinely interested in what you had to say.
Jack was a strong advocate for the north woods and the critters that lived there. He was especially vocal on the need to protect remote ponds.
I invited Jack to be the keynote speaker at a conference on water access a few years ago, and he gave an impassioned speech about his beloved backcountry ponds. He was fearful of what the north woods road network was doing to these small ponds that need protection. He had a profound impact on my own thinking about water access and remote ponds issues.
Indeed, it is unlikely that anyone who encountered the legendary flying warden was not impacted by his honesty, humility, passion, and love of the great north Maine woods.
Rereading "North of the C.P. Line" this week, an eerie quote stopped me.
"At night, he said, he flies 'like the old-timers, on instruments' — the instruments being his compass, his wristwatch, and the altimeter. Sometimes he flies that way in daytime. 'I do it quite often,' he said. 'It's not recommended policy, but sometimes it's the best way to get around. It's actually safer than being right down on the trees and catching a wing on a dead branch you don't see — which is the sort of thing that has happened to an awful lot of brush pilots."
Jack McPhee's plane may have come down, but his spirit still soars just above the treetops in the north woods. When next you are in those woods, listen carefully. Perhaps you will hear him up there, still watching over his beloved woods and critters.
George Smith of Mount Vernon is the executive director of the Sportsman's Alliance of Maine. His e-mail address is george@samcef.org