Wolford

HOWLAND — Dan Wolford graduated from Howland High School in 1989 with a path before him.

“I already knew I was going to join the military. I actually had joined under the delayed entry program so I took the oath about a year-and-a-half before graduation,” Wolford said.

He said he told his mother when he was 15 he wanted to learn to fly.

He ended up taking drivers’ education classes and flying lessons at the same time and even worked at a flight training school at the Youngstown-Warren Regional Airport in Vienna.

He had 45 hours of flying time in and a dream of becoming a cargo pilot, but when he took his flight test in Cleveland, it was found that he was color blind, which would pose a safety risk.

He continued working at the flight school after graduation, but went to basic training at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, that September.

Wolford continued training at a technical school at Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi, Mississippi to become an airport manager. He was one of the last two in his class to receive orders from the Air Force and he was sent to Eglin Air Force Base in the western panhandle of Florida, where he was a test weapons scheduler.

“Any new weapons developed for the military were tested here,” Wolford said, noting he was part of a team that would test bullets, missiles and bombs. “Shortly after I got there was when Operation Desert Shield kicked off and all the missions changed.

“I was part of a team that developed bunker buster bombs and a lot of the technology that came out of the Gulf War went through Eglin. The Iraqis had buried themselves underground very deep, but we didn’t have the bombs to get to them, so we started developing bombs to get there. They took a bunch of old tank barrels and filled them with high explosives, and we put two guidance packages in and there was a dome on the front of it and you could make a dumb bomb into a smart bomb,” Wolford said.

He also worked with Advanced Medium Range Air Missiles and Hellfire missiles. The AMRAM could be guided or aimed at the target.

After about a year and a half working with weapons, Wolford wanted a change and he put in for a transfer overseas. He only had to wait a few weeks before being told he was going to Misawa Air Base in Japan.

“I had a ball in Japan. My life in Florida was good, my night life in Florida was great, my work life in Florida was boring. My time in Japan was very eye opening and exciting,” Wolford said.

“I worked for the 39th rescue squadron, where I remained for almost two years. We had five Black Hawk helicopters set up for rescue. We all worked together to rescue people, anyone who needed it. Whether it was a pilot who happened to go down, whether it was on land or in the ocean, whether it was Japanese fishermen that would go out in the morning, we would rescue anyone, anywhere, anytime.”

He worked at an operations desk and kept track of what was going on in the airport, on the runway and with the weather (including varying altitudes). He had to keep track of daily planning.

“We practiced a lot. We did a lot of practice missions. We practiced picking up a lot of people in the oceans and lakes and the forest. There’s a lot of practice because ‘the more you sweat during peace time the less you bleed during war.’ We stuck by that motto. We did a lot of war games within our squadron too,” Wolford said.

“I remember a guy who was out on the bombing range cruising on his four-wheeler when he hit something, and he went over the handlebars, and he had two compound fractures of the femurs. We picked him up, and I’ll never forget his screams getting him out of the helicopter. This guy came back to the base to thank me, but I was just part of a team,” he said.

Later, he became a Certified Zodiac Assault Raft Boat Master.

“I had my main job, which was air operations management, but while practice rescue missions were being carried out, me and a para rescuer would wait in the raft. The para rescuer would parachute into combat and their job was strictly to save your life no matter what the cost. The guys in the helicopter would be flying around doing their night missions, practicing picking up people in the water and then me and the pararescue man would be in the assault raft at night circling outside where the practice was so if the helicopter went down in the water, I already knew where to be. We had survival suits and night vision goggles going really fast in the ocean — that was an exciting job that I had over there,” Wolford said.

He embraced the culture and learned to love it all.

“I really liked Japan, loved the people, loved the culture, and I got to love the food. I had very blonde hair and over there it’s just rare, so I know I was in a lot of people’s pictures,” he joked.

He got out of the Air Force in 1993 but soon realized that although he always had a plan to join, he didn’t have an exit plan.

“When I got back, I got to thinking that was the life I was meant to have, because I had always had a plan to go into the military, but I had no plan to get out. When I came home (to his parents’ house) and I sat on the couch, I had no plan what to do next. That was scary,” Wolford said.

He worked at Johnson Rubber but back issues and then back surgery with a nine-month recovery led to him being moved to the laboratory division working with the chemist on different rubber compounds. His back issues eventually led to him having to leave the job and he had back surgery where steel rods were inserted and a couple of disks were fused together.

The surgery worked so well that he took up backpacking and skydiving, but he threw his back out again and had to stop.

Dan Wolford

AGE: 54

RESIDENCE: Howland

SERVICE BRANCH: Air Force

FAMILY: wife of 10 years, Jennifer; adult twin children, Max and Emma; and one grandson, Ezra (6 months)