Father and Son Soldier the Skies
By Dawn Bilder

In 1968 a six-year-old boy was playing kickball with friends at his elementary school playground in Mansfield, Pennsylvania. He heard a roar and looked up, squinting against the sky, as an Air Force jet flew so low he could see the pilot. The moment enveloped him: the wonderful, furious sound of the jet, its sleek form against the blue ceiling of the Earth, the speed with which it disappeared. Sometimes it only takes an instant to know something. The young boy knew he would be a pilot. Someday he would be the man in the cockpit who another young boy would see as he flew close to the world. What he couldn’t know then was that the boy would be his own son.

Today, 46-year-old Chief Warrant Officer 4 Wendell Smith and his 25-year-old son, First Lieutenant Jason Smith, are the only father and son Apache helicopter pilots in the United States Army. They are National Guardsmen stationed at Fort Indiantown Gap, Pennsylvania.

Wendell is a quiet, analytical, and thoughtful man. Currently, he is training Apache helicopter pilots. He has served his country in Korea, Somalia, Kosovo, and in a year he’ll be in Iraq. During his time in Somalia, Wendell was involved in the “Black Hawk Down” incident. He flew over the area of the downed pilots and soldiers, trying to support the troops on the ground the best he could as he continuously took ground fire. He said, “It was frustrating not being allowed to land and help. It could have been me on the ground.”

Jason is quiet and thoughtful like his dad, “but he’s far more mechanical than I am,” Wendell said. “Since Jason learned to walk, he has been taking things apart and putting them back together. He started with his GI Joes. Then he moved to cars when he was 16.” Jason and his dad have always been close. Together they played basketball and baseball and hunted squirrels or “whatever was in season” as Jason grew older. Theresa, Wendell’s mother-in-law, said, “Wendell was never too busy for Jason. He always took the time to teach him right from wrong. I remember when Jason was three or four and Wendell was talking to him patiently about sharing toys.” When he heard what his mother-in-law had said about him, Wendell laughed: “Yeah, poor kid heard enough of my lectures.”

Apache helicopters and their pilots are universally respected. Wendell noted that Apache pilots suffer more casualties than pilots of other helicopters. Not only does an Apache pilot have to fly well, often in the dark, they have to be experts on coordinating their flying with weaponry. They have to learn how to use the cannon on their aircraft as well as their Hellfire missiles (originally anti-tank missiles). And they have to know the right weapon to use at the right time for the right target, all within seconds. To have two people in the same family, much less immediate family, with these rare skills is remarkable.

Even though Wendell let Jason sit in his helicopter cockpits as a boy and introduced him to the world of flying, he is quick to give credit to his wife, Jennifer, for how well Jason turned out. “She was the stabilizing force for Jason. I was away a lot because of my job.” Wendell met Jennifer at Mansfield High School. He lived in Roseville, Pennsylvania, and she lived a couple of miles up the road from him. They started dating in 11th grade, and they have been married for 27 years. When Theresa, Jennifer’s mother, was asked if it was hard for Jennifer to have military men for both a husband and a son, she laughed and said, “Her dad was a Marine. She holds her own. She also works as a nurse in a VA hospital, and they are ‘her boys,’ too.” Wendell confirmed his mother-in-law’s observations with a great deal of respect in his voice: “Jennifer’s feisty, but she has always supported me in anything I do.”

Wendell is also adamant about giving Jason credit for his accomplishments. “Jason is his own man, and he has earned the respect of his fellow pilots through his own efforts and has traveled his own path to get what he wants. Even though we work at the same base, I really try to give him the space he needs to do things.” One of Wendell’s proudest memories is the day Jason graduated from Flight School at the U.S. Army Aviation Warfighting Center at Fort Rucker, Alabama. Jason is currently being trained for a new type of Apache and will be deployed when he’s finished.

Wendell is not only an enthusiastic father, husband, pilot, and soldier, he is clearly also a good man. The six-year-old in 1968 who saw the jet fly by and his son who sat in his father’s cockpits as a youth have found their own wings. Now they fly together, not just as father and son, but as man to man. 

Wellsboro resident Dawn Bilder is a frequent contributor to Mountain Home magazine.