Heroes in our Hometown: Ken Powell

The Washington County Times is happy to be launching a new column this week called “Heroes in our Hometown.” This column will aim to highlight the local veterans in our community that have proudly served our great nation and give them an opportunity to share their stories and experiences. I am very happy to introduce our first veteran in the series: United States Air Force and Vietnam Veteran Ken Powell.

Ken and Wanda Powell

Born in 1936, Ken Powell had the dream of going to college. However, his family grew up very poor and could not afford it. Being a disabled World War I veteran, his father was unable to work, and college did not really seem like a feasible path for him.

“Growing up, we were as poor as church mice,” said Powell. “We had no electricity until my senior year of high school, and we had no running water at all until I had already left home. But, I had heard from someone that the military would pay for my education if I joined. I had a cousin who was already in the Air Force, and I already had it in the back of my mind that I wanted to be involved in the aviation industry anyway, so I joined the Air Force and really enjoyed it after a few years. I really liked what I was doing, so I just decided to make a career out of it.”

After a brief conversation about his childhood, Powell shared a funny story that I certainly was not expecting.

“When we were kids, we would usually head out on our bikes early in the morning right after breakfast and not return until shortly before dark, and nobody ever worried about us,” said Powell. “Sometimes in the summer, we would go down to a big swimming hole next to Heritage Chapel Rd and skinny dip. During that time, passenger trains were running all the time, and when one would come by, we would all jump out of the water! It was funny, you could see people in the train pointing at us. That was always fun to do.”

Ken continued by discussing some of the differences in the world from back when he was growing up to today.

“We were just safer back then. We didn’t have to worry about a lot of the things that we have to worry over now. Kids could go out and just play all day long. There seemed to really be a tranquil period after World War II ended. Everybody was working – people actually wanted to work – and your money went a lot further than it does now,” said Ken.

“Although, I do prefer how things are now. People say equipment was made better back in the day, but I don’t really believe that. They say cars were better back then, but I don’t think that’s true either. If you bought a new car back then, you could expect to maybe get 50,000 or so miles out of it. Today, you can drive most cars for hundreds of thousands of miles. Technology is better now too. Used to, you would have to wait weeks, sometimes months, before you heard about what was going on in another part of the world. Everything is so instant now.”

Throughout his extensive career spanning 27 years, Powell has held many different positions within the Air Force and has worked on a numerous number of different planes.

“I started out as what they call an Electronic Countermeasures (ECM) Operator on a B36 Bomber. That particular plane doesn’t exist anymore unless you visit a museum,” said Powell. “It was a ten-engine airplane, and it was the largest bomber in the world at the time. It had six Pratt & Whitney R-4360 Wasp Major engines pointing backward and two jets on each wing tip. It had a crew of about 20.

B36 Bomber

R-4360 Engine

“Four people in the plane were ECM Operators, and my job was to pick up radar signals, analyze them, determine what they were and give that information to intelligence officers,” Powell continued. “That all eventually went away, and they didn’t need ECM Operators anymore, so I went into Electronic Maintenance and did that for a number of years – communications, navigation equipment – avionics later turned out to be the name for it all.

“After a while, when I had gained enough rank, I was able to transfer into any department. There is aviation maintenance, there’s what we call field maintenance which is all equipment, engines, hardware and hydraulics, and there is also the flight line. That would entail things like refueling and performing constant maintenance on the aircraft on the line. So, I went through all of that and became the superintendent of the last avionics branch, the in the field maintenance branch, and the organizational maintenance branch,” added Powell. “It was a good life.”

Ken went on to describe one of the jobs he preferred over some of the others. During the Cold War days, Powell had spent a year in Newfoundland and Labrador where he assisted with what was called the Defense Early Warning (DEW) line.

“There was a transmitter and receiver station up there that received information from north of the DEW line,” Ken said. “ We picked up signals from the north and transmitted them back to the States. I really enjoyed that year. I didn’t enjoy being away from my family, but the job was good.

“There were just 19 or 20 of us up there. People would come and go, but there was always a crew of around 19 or 20 at all times,” Powell added. “One fun thing I remember is that we had a little track vehicle called a Weasel that we used to go around on the snow and inspect the antenna systems. In the winter when we had a little time off, we had this big, long sled – it was about 15 feet or so – and we would hook that thing up behind the Weasel, climb on the sled, and whoever was driving would sling the sled around and we would try to stay on as long as possible.

“We had a medic up there with us, and somehow or another I slung him in front of the Weasel and I ran over him!” Ken remarked. “I thought I had killed him, but it didn’t hurt him at all; it just pushed him down into the snow.”

American Flag flown above the U.S. Capitol that was presented to Powell.

U.S. Flag certificate

Members of the Powell family who have served.

On January 1, 1967, Ken Powell was sent, like many others, to serve in the Vietnam War. He was tasked to be on a special-built airplane that they called the Airborne Battlefield Command Control Center.

“Our job was to find things and to control a certain Corps, I Corps for example, which is up along the DMZ," Powell said. “We controlled all the airstrikes that other people were doing, and we had constant contact with them. My job was to maintain the capsule that went into the back of the C-130 airplane, and I was also the radio operator and technician aboard that. We would also be in constant contact with rescue helicopters as they went in to try and rescue soldiers when needed. Sometimes they didn’t get there in time.

“Another aspect of my job in Vietnam was to listen. Other airplanes, like the C-123, would drop these old sound devices along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. My job was to listen through those devices to try and determine where equipment was heading. The North Vietnamese would often move equipment by elephant, and it was my responsibility to report what I heard to the right people,” added Powell. “That was a volunteer job that I did for about 8 months, and normally these missions we did were about 15 hours long. At the end of each mission, we would be relieved by another crew and plane. My callsign was Hillsboro, and we would be relieved by Cricket or Alleycat. There were only three planes in the country doing this kind of work. In my time there, I flew for a little over 1,500 hours, and I came home just a minute or two before midnight on Christmas Eve, 1967.”

C-123

Map of Vietnam

C-130

C-130 with Powell's dog tags.

During Ken’s time in Vietnam, he was able to see some of the great musicians and comedians of the time. For instance, he saw Bob Hope, Raquel Welch, Martha Raye, and Nancy Sinatra to name a few. He even drove Sinatra to the hospital.

“I was the low man on the totem pole, so I had to drive her. Nobody else wanted anything to do with her because of her personality. She acted like she didn’t want to be there. It was just something she had to do, I guess,” Ken said. “But I don’t know for sure, that was just my opinion.”

Bob Hope

Nancy Sinatra

Shortly after, Ken motioned toward his wife, Wanda, and said, “But she has had the hardest job in the military: being a military wife for 27 years. It was kind of fun, really, how we met. I was stationed at Fairchild Air Force base in Spokane, Washington at the time early into my career. I was going to go to Coeur d’Alene, Idaho to look at the lake, and stopped at this little restaurant one day when I was off. It was only about 15 miles from where I was heading. I happened to see this real pretty girl, and she interested me a lot. So, I ordered cherry pie and ice cream, and I went back to the restaurant later on… and again… and again,” laughed Ken.

“One day after she got her driver’s license, she said to me, ‘want me to take you for a ride?’ And she’s been taking me for a ride ever since for the last 68 years. She takes really good care of me. I have some handicaps; I have trouble walking, I take chemo pills everyday for my leukemia, and I have heart pills due to heart problems. So, it’s sometimes hard to get around. It’s the best nursing home I’ll ever be in,” he laughed again.

In the beginning, Ken enlisted so that the military would pay for his college, and that is exactly what they did. Much like many service members, being in the military has taken Ken Powell to many different places. He obtained his graduate degree in vocational training from Webster University, but he earned his undergraduate degree in industrial management while attending many different schools as his military duties sent him all over the country.

When he first joined the Air Force, he went to Geneva, New York for basic training, he traveled to Biloxi, Mississippi for further training, and he was then assigned to Fairchild Air Force Base in Washington. After he married Wanda, he was transferred to Little Rock, Arkansas and California afterward. After spending a few years there, he went back to Mississippi for more training, and went to spend his year in Labrador shortly after. After traveling to Montana for five years, Ken made his way back to California, then to Vietnam, Texas, Okinawa, New Hampshire for three years, and finally Wichita, Kansas where he retired from the Air Force after four years.

That was not the end of Powell’s career in aviation, however. After retiring from the Air Force at the age of 45, Ken stayed in Wichita and worked for Boeing for another 13 years as the Technical Training Manager for the Wichita division before eventually moving back to his childhood home in Canton, Indiana about 30 years ago. The last plane he worked on during his time at Boeing was the Boeing 777.

Perhaps one of the most fascinating stories Ken mentioned was the fact that he helped build Air Force One in 1984-85. However, he could not say too much about it because he is unsure if the information is still classified or not.

Boeing 777

Upon retiring from Boeing, Ken set his sights on more work and more school. After going back to school, he spent about four years in total at H&R Block, spent time at one of the local car washes, transported people from the local area to nearby places such as Louisville for three years, became a substitute teacher for five years, and obtained his real estate license and did real estate locally for about five years. Needless to say, when Ken “retired” from Boeing, he certainly was not done working.

“Learning is a lifelong process, and once you quit learning, you might as well order your coffin,” said Powell.

Now, Ken spends time tinkering in his shop, and goes to craft shows. He loves to garden, attend church at First Baptist Church in Salem, and of course, loves to spend time with his wife Wanda.

It was certainly a pleasure to be able to sit down and learn about Ken’s long and eventful life. His compassion and determination to just keep moving is unlike any other I’ve seen. He is truly a joy to be around, and I sincerely hope people for years to come have the opportunity to have a conversation with him.

Ken Powell, thank you so much for your service.