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Alberton native Col. Rick Hardy amassed an impressive record of
search and rescue (SAR) missions as a pilot with the Canadian military
from 1978 to 1996.
He clocked roughly 5,000 hours, mostly at the controls of a helicopter,
but also with plenty of adventures flying airplanes.
"Maybe 75 to 100 people I've saved, I guess,'' he said matter-of-factly.
"Some people have said thanks. Most don't.''
That's not to say his work has gone unnoticed.
During his tour with the United States Coast
Guard flying the HH-3F Pelican helicopter, Hardy twice received
the United States Air Medal for meritorious SAR missions.
The second Air Medal, awarded for the rescue of 37 Russian sailors
from their freighter floundering in a severe Atlantic Ocean storm,
was presented to Hardy at the White House by President Ronald Reagan
in March 1987.
"They told me when I was interviewed (the story made big news
on P.E.I. and across Canada), after Reagan decorated me, that I'm
the only member of the Canadian Forces ever to have been decorated
by an American president,'' he said.
"Now that is kind of neat. I mean it's a kid's daydream.''
In fact, Hardy, 49, who recently was given the nod as Canadian
Defence attache to Norway, started eyeing the sky as a great potential
workplace when he was just a kid.
"I had an epiphany when I was 12,'' he said.
"I came home from school one day and a great, big honking
red, white and blue helicopter landed beside our house (which was
located next to a hospital) . . . It was a great, big, huge helicopter
and I remember I was in the kitchen with my mom and I said 'that's
what I want to do. That would be really neat.' ''
He was, by his own description, an unremarkable child setting his
sights on a remarkable career.
"I guess I was about as typical an Islander as you could possibly
be,'' he said.
Hardy was a middle-of-the-pack student, had a newspaper route for
several years, and helped his father, the late Wesley Hardy, in
the family's general store.
He also played hockey, lacing up for junior 'B' games with the
West Prince Junior Bears, which later became the Maroons.
"We weren't very good and we fought a lot,'' he said as he
chugged coffee in his Cascumpec home on a second floor balcony that
overlooks Mill River.
"I was really aggressive — all 132 pounds of me. I was almost
six feet and 132 pounds . . . I lost every fight I was in.''
But he would win a hard-fought battle to live out his childhood
dream.
Hardy initially saw little future with the shrinking Canadian Forces
as a prevailing anti-military sentiment was being fuelled by the
strong public outcry against the Vietnam War.
So in 1971, he resigned himself to the pursuit of dentistry.
He quickly made an about face when a recruiter
came to his high school and coaxed him to dive head first into the
Royal Military College in Kingston, Ont. Hardy saw the move as his
long shot to getting in the driver's seat of search and rescue aircraft.
"So I went to military college, and if there's ever a fish
out of water in the history of the military recruiting, it had to
be me,'' he said.
"First of all, I was not academically prepared,'' he said.
"Prince Edward Island does not have a high standard — or as
high a standard — especially in the sciences and maths, as the other
provinces. So I was significantly behind.''
The rigid nature of military college was also a culture shock that
jolted the small-town boy who was accustomed to greeting everyone,
young and old, by their first name.
"You weren't allowed to walk outside,'' he said.
"You weren't allowed to talk outside. Everyone was sir. You
had to stand at attention for a long time and I hated every minute
of it. I remember standing out in the parade square one day with
a bee in my ear and hoping it wouldn't sting me — and of course
you can't move.''
His academic introduction to the college was less than stellar,
scoring 17 per cent on a chemistry test and managing only 22 per
cent on a calculus test.
"I had no freaking idea what they were talking about,'' he
said.
But he buckled down. He quit the hockey team and he quit the soccer
team to fully focus his attention on academics. While other students
sought a reprieve from the military college during leave and day
passes, Hardy hit the books in the library every Friday night and
Saturday.
"As it turned out I passed,'' he said. "I never did fail
any tests after that. In fact, I graduated with an honours degree.''
He also soared through basic flying training and received his pilot's
wings in Moose Jaw, Sask., in 1977.
"It was incredible testing. I had a ball. Other guys went
absolutely crazy.''
In 1981, Hardy was posted to 103 Squadron, Gander, Nfld., where
he flew the Labrador helicopter as he set out on a course that would
eventually become an impressive two decades of search and rescue
missions.
"Everybody referred to him as Mr. Rescue,''
said retired Lt.-Col. Jerry Elias of Baden, Ont.
"He's done just about all the jobs available in the search
and rescue operation.''
The desire — even eagerness — to fly to the rescue of people in
peril was simply in Hardy's blood.
Although his body is free of tattoos, he says if he were to saddle
up to a parlour it would be to get wings tattooed on his chest.
"I'm extremely proud of being a search and rescue pilot,''
he said.
"You know when you fly over the North Atlantic in the wintertime
it's freaking cold and our survivability is almost nil. If we crash
we're dead. And so we're out there pulling somebody off a ship or
looking for survivors. We're the last ditch and if we get into a
problem, if we go down, there's nobody to help us. It's over. So
that's exciting.''
Gwen Hardy said her husband has the right makeup for a job that
is never short on both heart-stopping and heart-wrenching adventures.
"I think it's his ability to disassociate himself enough to
do the job and let nerves and empathy or whatever come into play
afterwards,'' she said.
She recalled the unnerving mission Hardy set out on one Father's
Day to try to recover the body of a drowning victim — a young girl
who was about the same age as the couple's own daughter at the time.
"That bothered him for a long time after,'' she said.
"Something would remind him of that incident and it would
come back almost as if it had happened the day before.''
Hardy said he is haunted by the image of the girl's dead body rolling
over on a sandbar as he stared directly into her wide open eyes.
"About a month later I got the shakes,'' he said. "A
month later it hit me. It hit me hard.''
He says a steady diet of chatter and coffee have helped keep him
from turning into a basket case following such unnerving events.
After a particularly rough outing, Hardy and his crew would find
their way back to a restaurant, bar or the mess, and talk through
the ordeal.
"So we did our own defusing,'' he said. "We didn't even
know it was defusing or debriefing. It was a way of dealing with
the experience.''
He recalls one harsh incident, when weather, fate and even human
emotion seemed stacked against him, that tested both his mettle
and his resolve.
Hardy rallied a SAR crew together for a mission that truly put
them all in harm's way: trying to transport a baby to hospital by
helicopter in stormy weather that could easily send the aircraft
plummeting to the ground.
"A helicopter in a thunderstorm is death,'' he said. "It
will be destroyed. I mean if lightning hits the rotor blade, it's
gone.''
When heavy rain "fried'' the radar, the crew was unable to
determine whether they would be flying through thunderstorms.
"We couldn't go anywhere,'' he said.
So the mission had to be aborted. Hardy called the doctor in Grand
Falls to tell him the SAR crew couldn't transport the baby. The
doctor was not understanding.
"He said 'you know something, I think you are nothing but
a goddamn coward. This baby is going to die and it's going to be
your fault.' ''
At the same time, Hardy was getting his head chewed off by a crew
member, who felt the mission never should have been attempted in
the first place. The crew member accused Hardy of trying to kill
five people to save the baby. He called Hardy "an idiot'' for
pushing too far.
"And he's yelling at me and the doctor is on the other end
of the phone saying 'you're a coward, you didn't even try to save
this baby.' And I'm sitting there between the rock and the hard
place. And I remember my one thought . . . I love this. This is
exactly why I'm a search and rescue pilot, because this is so real.''
Unfortunately, the outcome of the failed mission was tragic. The
baby did die. Hardy recalls a Grand Falls newspaper running a story
the next day reporting on how he refused to save a baby's life.
"And that's what makes the search and rescue pilot and the
profession so challenging and demanding,'' he said.
"That's why it's not just flying. It's (determining) how far
can I go, how far can my crew go, how far can the airplane go, before
I say no.''
His most cherished memory is the result of deciding to go ahead
when many others likely would not have attempted the mission.
He flew a boy who needed to be taken to hospital if he was to live
in an airplane ill-equipped for the harsh elements as snow fell
from the dark sky. There was the strong risk of the engine malfunctioning
in the snow.
"We could have said no,'' Hardy said of what proved to be
a live-saving excursion.
He and the crew forged ahead. The boy was transported safely to
hospital. The boy was later saved.
Then came the touching moment Hardy will never forget.
"The father walked in just as we were about to start the airplane
and head home,'' he said.
"He talked about his life as an oil rig worker. He didn't
mention much about his son. When he first came in, we said 'the
kid made it' and he said 'yeah, he's OK, he's going to be fine.'
Anyway, then he walked out and as he walked out of the little restaurant
there, he turned and he said, 'you know, you just can't say thanks.
Thanks isn't enough.' Then he got choked up and he left.
"I've got medals. I've got awards. I've got letters. But that
one . . . You know that was from the heart and that was special
. . . That's worth a lifetime. That's worth a career.''
© Copyright
2002 Charlottetown Guardian
Reprinted with permission of Charlottetown Guardian
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