Honoring Our Veterans – Chuck Carver
 | Author:
Matt Nelson
MT43 News Correspondent |
Honoring Our Veterans – Chuck Carver
Matt Nelson
Chuck was born and raised in Fort Benton out on the Highwood Bench on a dry land farm. He had five brothers and one sister. His dad worked as a carpenter because he didn’t make enough on that farm to feed everybody. As a teenager, Chuck worked as an apprentice carpenter under his dad. After high school he had a football scholarship to Western Montana in Dillon, but realized after one year he wasn’t ready for college, so he enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1958 and was in until 1961. He went to Basic Training at Ft. Carson, Colorado, and after that was assigned to Ft. Rucker, Alabama for helicopter school, where he became a crew chief and worked on helicopters. Chuck had his private pilot license at 19, prior to entering the service.
He was trained on the Bell H-19s, Helis H-21s, and DeHavilland U-34s helicopters. After a year of being Stateside he was assigned to a unit outside of Munich, Germany on one of Hitler’s favorite airfields. He worked mostly on the H-34s. As a crew chief, he had to fly, and he picked up 83 hours flying on helicopters. At that time Viet Nam was starting, and the Viet Cong were shooting rifles at the people in the cockpits of the helicopters. Two people had to be in the helicopters that flew. Chuck said he flew a lot of helicopters.
In Germany, the main thing he got into was running the blockade in Berlin, which was before the Berlin Wall was built. When President Eisenhower was in office and went to peace talks in France, the helicopter he used was supplied by Chuck’s military unit. “We worked months on that helicopter to get it shining-shape for him. He was initially picked up in Frankfurt, went down to France and walked out of those talks and came back to Frankfurt. But I did not get to see him.”
Another time they flew through Austria, which was a neutral country, and they had to land because the oil pressure went down. When they actually landed they were met by a bunch of soldiers pointing machine guns at them. But the tensions eased quickly, and after the Austrian soldiers helped them fix the problem they flew on to Italy.
Once they were in a narrow draw about eight feet off of the ground, and the pilot unintentionally spun the Bell H-19 a little too much and hit the tail rotor on the wall of the draw. They had to have another new tail rotor flown in to fix it.
When Chuck had seven months left to serve, he hit a hedgehog while riding a motorcycle and traveling 40 miles per hour. It was like hitting a big chunk of ice. Chuck had to have shoulder surgery because he broke it. He was taken off of flight status but managed to get on the 7th Army Rifle Team and traveled all over Germany. Chuck grinned, “I loved it over there!”
After coming home, Chuck attended a construction engineering school in Missoula. That eventually led to Chuck working on several construction projects for thirty years. He also had a ranch in Dillon –“That was the biggest mistake I ever made!” A horse broke his back so he didn’t have to ranch anymore after that.
He has played a lot of music and sang which helped him get through school. Often he sang and played his guitar at the Trailhead Christian Fellowship Church, and he has also played at the Montana Cowboy Poetry Gathering and Western Music Rendezvous in Lewistown.
He was married to his first wife for 35 years, from 1962 until 1997. After she passed away from cancer, he reconnected with Ginger at a class reunion, and on September 30th they will be married 21 years. Chuck has one son and two grandsons, and a daughter who lives in California. His son is a forest service ranger at Seeley Lake. Ginger has three kids from a previous marriage, and Chuck and Ginger have five grandchildren, all born after Chuck and Ginger got married. In the Winter they go to Peoria, AZ.
The reason he is in Townsend is that often he and his son used to drive through it and Chuck decided this is where he wanted to live.
His 1st engineering job was with Kicking Horse Job Corps Camp at Kalispell; he worked on bridges at Ft. Benton, and 5 bridges at Missoula; worked on the high school in Dillon and the field house, a dorm, and the library at Western Montana College, also in Dillon. Chuck also worked on some Safeway stores and a few commercial buildings. He went to ranching after that. After leaving ranching, he once again did construction work for the Bechtel Corporation at the Anaconda power plant, building an electronic smelter for the Anaconda Company in 1979, which cost 61 million dollars. The copper came out at 995 pure, but for some reason, the government shut it down. Chuck didn’t elaborate. He had helped his dad build a bowling alley while in high school, so he used that experience to build another one in Anaconda.
Chuck loves to fish and hunt, and flew as a private pilot for many years. Altogether he has accumulated about 1450 hours of flying time. In 2010 I bought my 1958 Cessna 172 from Chuck, which I really enjoyed flying.
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PhotoCredit: Photo Credits: Matt Nelson
Image 1 Caption: Private 1st Class Chuck Carver about 1958 or 1959.
Photo Credits: Matt Nelson
Image 2 Caption: Chuck Carver with moose antler and the eagle head he carved on it.
Photo Credits: Matt Nelson
