Harmon "Bud" Helmericks Passing

[KG]

Author of "Last of the Bush Pilots". Worth reading if you can find a copy. Bud Helmericks flew Cessna 140s and 170s for years in Alaska.

http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/adn/ob ... =139779054

Harmon "Bud" Helmericks
Harmon "Bud" Helmericks, Arctic explorer, bush pilot and author, died Jan. 28, 2010, in Wickenburg, Ariz. He was 93.

Bud was born Jan. 18, 1917, and raised on a farm in Illinois. He studied engineering at the University of Arizona before migrating to Alaska in 1940 with his first wife, Constance, to take up a life of adventure and exploration. When not out living and exploring in Alaska's wilderness, Bud worked for the Alaska Railroad, at the docks in Seward, and served in the Army Corps of Engineers in the mid-1940s. Two daughters, Jeanie and Annie, were born to Bud and Connie during Bud's early years in Alaska.

Bud was inspired by Vilhjalmur Stefansson's early Arctic exploration and writings, and soon his early years of exploring and survival in Alaska's wild places produced books written (or co-authored) by Bud. One of Bud's later and most famous books is "The Last of the Bush Pilots," the story of Alaska's flying frontiersmen and their daring and courageous exploits to bring improved transportation and services to a vast and wild land.

As one of Alaska's most famous bush pilots himself, Bud holds the Award of Merit, Territory of Alaska, for "Special Service in the Arctic Regions." He couldn't tell you exactly how many Alaska flight hours he had, because he tired of adding up his flight hours after logging over 27,000 hours. He crossed thousands of miles of mostly uninhabited wilderness in small Cessnas on wheels, skis or pontoons.

In 1953, Bud married Martha Morlang and together with son, Jim, they established a homestead on the Colville River Delta, located on the North Slope of Alaska. Sons Mark and Jeff soon joined the family, and the children were raised and home-schooled on the edge of the Arctic Ocean.

Bud established a flourishing commercial fishing operation, became a renowned big-game guide (Alaskan Master Guide No. 4), and continued his adventures as one of the first Alaskan bush pilots. Known for his Arctic knowledge and experience, Bud became a consultant for Eastman Kodak, Eddie Bauer, and other companies working in cold-weather regions. He was an industrial guide for northern Alaska's early oil exploration, starting with guiding Northern Transportation Co.'s barges loaded with Sinclair drilling equipment and supplies from the Mackenzie River across the Arctic Ocean into the Colville River. He was also a consultant for British Petroleum during its early push into the Prudhoe Bay region. Western Geophysical used Bud to orchestrate its first seismic "cat-train" operations across the Arctic prairie. Hundreds of flights of equipment and supplies were flown into an ice runway on the river in front of the homestead and the cat-train assembled. Bud taught the crew how to safely operate and travel in severe cold and unfamiliar territory.

Throughout Bud's life in Alaska, he documented each day in a journal. He was always writing and produced many magazine articles on Alaska life and experiences, about animals, cold weather survival, and other outdoor topics. He was a spokesman for conservation and prudent game management, and studied these subjects throughout the world, having traveled extensively.

In 1999, Bud received the Alaska Professional Hunters Association Andy Simon-Hal Waugh Award, Alaska's big-game guide's highest honor. In addition, Bud was the Wright Brothers Master Pilot Award honoree for the Fairbanks Flight Standards District Office in 2004.

For many years, Bud lectured about the Arctic on the old lecture circuit throughout the Lower 48 states for several months each winter. He had been a member of the prestigious Explorers Club since 1947. He produced movies for the lectures, plus contributed to some major films, including one produced in 1970 titled "Edge of the Arctic Ice," a feature-length movie about the Helmericks family and life in the Arctic.

He is survived by his wife, Martha Helmericks; brother, Jim Helmericks and his wife Jemmi; children, Jim and Teena Helmericks, Jeanie Aspen-Irons and Tom Irons, Annie Helmericks-Louder and John Louder, Mark and Lori Helmericks, and Jeff and Susan Helmericks; 11 grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.

A memorial service is planned for this summer in Alaska. Condolences may be sent to Martha Helmericks, P.O. Box 275, Salome, Ariz., 85348.

Published in adn.com from February 17 to February 19, 2010

[N3243A]

I'm very sorry to report the passing of Bud Helmericks, a pioneer Alaskan aviator and bush pilot on Jan. 27 2010. Bud flew 170's for many years around the North Slope of Alaska when our favorite airplanes were actually "new" and has contributed to the 170 News on many occasions with his stories and pictures of the north. His excellent book The Last of the Bush Pilots should be on every C-170 pilot's must read list. He was 93. I extend my sincerest condolences to the Helmericks family.

Bruce Christie, Wasilla AK

http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/newsmi ... =139792556

[canav8]

KG I like your new ICON. Doug

[edbooth]

Hate to hear that, Bud was a speaker at our convention in Fairbanks back in 1988, one of our best conventions ever. Think we had about 120 planes.

Ed Booth

[bsdunek]

My Dad met Bud when he was on his way to Alaska with the 'Arctic Tern', a Cessna 140 (or maybe 120). He bought Bud's books when they came out. I met Bud at the 1988 convention, and found him to be a very pleasent guy with no big ego.
I'm sorry to hear of his passing, although 93 isn't too shabby. I too offer a prayer for his remaining family.

[Green Bean]

One story wasn't that is known to many, but in 1952 flew Bud flew Arctic Tern - one of the first Cessna 170B's in Alaska at the time, to the North Pole. The following is an article by Craig Medred, Anchorage Daily News, Feb 24, 2010.

Remembering Harmon "Bud" Helmericks

Nobody in the Alaska of today much seemed to notice when Harmon Helmericks, a man firmly rooted in the Alaska of yesterday, passed away in Wickenburg, Ariz., at the end of January. Bush pilot, adventurer, guide, businessman, author and more, 'Bud" -- as almost everyone knew him -- was for decades an institution on the North Slope. He lived, fished, worked and raised a family at the mouth ofthe Colville River west of the oil-pumping moon station known as Prudhoe Bay.

Though he wrote a lot over the years and was often written about, he wasn't what you'd call a publicity hound. He was from that old school of Alaska adventurers who did things mainly for the experience, not for the attention or the possible income. Doug O'Harra, who used to write for a Sunday magazine the Anchorage newspaper used to publish, remembers being a little shocked at discovering in 1992 that Hehnericks had flown a single-engine Bush plane more than 2,000 miles on a tricky flight from Alaska to the North Pole and back nearly four decades earlier. Helmericks didn't make a big deal of it at the time or after.
O'Harra Stumbled on the story largely by accident. One of those fine storytellers who worked at a newspaper when the Alaska media- barons considered storytelling something of value, O'Harra can relate the particulars as good or better than I. Here's what he wrote in a now extinct publication called ''We Alaskans" way back when:

Before preparations for summer and spring subsistence activities, Bud took a notion to do a little exploring. He decided to fly to the North Pole. By then, Helmericks had been in the Arctic more than a decade. A member of the international Explorers Club since 1947, Bud and his first wife, Constance, had traveled the Brooks Range extensively and published a series of books read all over the United States:
"We Live In the Arctic," "Our Summer With The Eskimos," rr Our Alaskan Winter" and "Flight of the Arctic Tern.

"I had the time and I had the fuel, so I just decided to fly out and fly back," Helmericks says now, describing his decision to try to fly to the top of the world. He shrugs off any notion that his trip was heroic or dangerous. "I just wanted to see what was out there, " he says. "All you needed was enough fuel, a way to refuel, and a way to navigate. " So Helmericks loaded 200 gallons of gas into the Arctic Tern (Alaska's first Cessna 170) more than enough, he figured, for the 2,200-mile round trip. To refuel, he would land on frozen leads, newly formed expanses of ice as flat as paved runways. Navigating would be more difficult. By flying north of the magnetic pole, a compass would be practically useless, and 24-hour daylight made navigation by stars impossible. So Helmericks decided he'd use the sun. He drew up a diagram correlating the sun's position as it circled the horizon with time of day, a foolproof compass as long as he had the correct time. To ensure there would be no mistakes, he took along three timepieces: the airplane's clock, a gold watch and a cheap wristwatch. Eleven hours of flying due north at 100 mph, and Bud Helmericks figured he'd be there. Before he took off, Nanny Woods ran out and gave him a loaf of fresh bread. Then he was
gone.
The trip went exactly as planned. The air had that cold and crystalline clarity that often occurs in the spring over the pole. When Helmericks needed to refuel, he'd find a lead, then land, cover the plane, eat, drink tea and rest. From the air, Helmericks says, he saw "just
miles and miles and miles and miles of ice." When he reached the location he figured must be the North Pole, he didn't even land. "Ijust circled and started back home," he says. I didn't want to start using up my fuel. "

When Helmericks returned to the Woods camp, two days after he started, he simply covered up the plane, tied it down, and went inside to get something to eat. No press conferences, no publicity, no fanfare. Outside of his family and close friends, almost no one ever knew what he'd done. " Wouldn't you want to see what was in your back yard?" Helmericks says now. "It was a lot less dangerous than flying from Anchorage to Prudhoe Bay, what with the coastal weather and mountain ranges to cross. " Perhaps. But the unassuming and private manner with which Helmericks accomplished a trip that could have grabbed worldwide headlines would characterize the next three decades of
his life as he and Martha established a unique living on the Arctic frontier. That they did, indeed. Crazy as it might seem, they built a successful commercial fishing business at the mouth of the Colville River netting whitefish through the ice and raised three sons who turned out well... One of those sons, Jim, still lives at the Colville and runs the old family businesses -- Golden Plover Guiding Company and the fishing operation. Another son, Jeff ran Colville Inc., the multi-million dollar fuel and oil-field services company his father started on the North Slope, until he sold it to brother, Mark, the Harvard grad and one time Rhodes scholar. Jeff now pursues a family passion -- flying -- in the Susitna Valley north of Anchorage. All the Hehnerickses seem to share their father's belief that there's nothing a man can't do, only things he hasn't done. Alaska has a history of attracting people like this, or did. The late Chuck Keirn, a professor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, used to expound on how this was no more than an extension of the westward movement that has for hundreds of years peopled North America with adventurers of all sorts -- good and bad,
honest and crooked, intelligent and crazed. . A flat lander born to farming parents in Illinois in 1917, Helmericks would certainly fit the bill. He migrated west with his family to Arizona at an early age, eventually went to the University of Arizona to study engineering. and
then headed about as far north into nothing as a man could go. He built a home almost from nothing there and
lived a life in the Arctic still undergoing the transition from the ancient world to the modem.

Helmericks clearly wanted Alaska -- that place beyond the cities that is in many ways now more deserted than at
the turn ofthe century -- to be occupied by people like him; But then that would require people like him, and
they are becoming rarer and rarer in a world where the white noise of know-nothings blathering on the internet
takes precedent over the quieter reflections of those living far from the urban bustle.
Hehnericks loved the land, but understood fully that just loving the land wasn't enough. Nothing is that simple.
Helmericks helped in the development of the Prudhoe Bay oil fields, and he courted birders to come to the Colville Delta to watch one of the largest gatherings of bird life on the North Slope.
Nobody understood better that even the simple life isn't simple.

[flyingdakota]

Thank you for posting this info! Every once and awhile I do a google search for him to see if more info comes up. I was surprized that this hadn't come up in earlier searches since it was posted in 2010. I have followed and wanted to learn more about Bud and his family (I have met Jeff and correspond with Jim on FB) I met Bud in May of 2007 after I got the Cessna 140 he flew into AK, flying. My 140 is the second 140 they flew but all the illustrations in the book "Flight of the Arctic Tern" are of NC2404V. It was such an honor to meet Bud, Martha and Jeff! I wish I could have more time to spend with him and listen to stories he may have wanted to tell. One day I hope to fly "The Tern" back to AK and land on the Delta where Jim lives. I have been working towards a set of floats too, "The Tern" will fly home one day and land in the waters where she once did!
Best to all,
Tim Mix