Family, friends mourning loss of warden pilot Jack McPhee

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Gary Dumond first met the man who would change his life back in 1967, during his senior year in high school.

That man – Maine warden pilot Jack McPhee – suggested Dumond look into a U.S. Army program that let students go “from high school to flight school.”

Dumond did. He ended up becoming a warden pilot … just like McPhee. And on Wednesday, just three days after his mentor died while flying his own Piper Super Cub over the Maine woods he loved, Dumond explained exactly what McPhee meant to him.

“Jack would be like my big brother. I didn’t have any big brother, but he was one,” Dumond said.

That sentiment – or one similar to it – was echoed across the state this week, as friends mourned the death of a man who spent his adult life in service to the state and its people.

McPhee, who had since retired from the warden service but continued doing contract work for the state, died when his 1953 Super Cub crashed on Sunday morning, 50 miles west of Ashland. His plane clipped a tree, then plummeted nose-first into the forest. McPhee was working when he died, tracking radio-collared lynx.

McPhee’s daughter, Sheryl Harriman of Prospect, said that while investigation of the crash continues, pilot error is not suspected.

“In the obit I wrote that Jack died May 4 when his airplane crashed as a result of an unexpected medical emergency,” Harriman said.

That explanation was welcomed by Dumond and others.

“For me, that was closure,” he said.

The reason, Dumond says, was simple. The man he knew and respected was a very careful man who wouldn’t have made the one costly mistake pilots can’t afford to make.

“They just don’t come any better than [McPhee],” he said.

Among McPhee’s closest friends was Peter Bourque, a longtime state fisheries expert who met the pilot when each, as some would say, wore a younger man’s clothes. The year was 1968. Bourque had just been transferred to Ashland, and McPhee was settling into his new job after moving from Washington County.

Over the years, the pair spent hundreds of hours in the air together.

Bourque said McPhee’s people skills were as impressive as his ability to handle a wide variety of aircraft.

It’s the personal side that made Bourque and McPhee friends.

The things McPhee did while in the cockpit of an airplane? Well, they just made Bourque respect him a bit more.

“He had amazingly keen eyesight,” Bourque said on Wednesday. “I can remember times [on ice-fishing surveys] when he would already be counting anglers on a lake when we were a lake away. I would have to wait until we were five miles closer to make out specks. When I could see anglers, he was already counting fishing traps.”

McPhee’s daughter, Harriman, has fond memories of growing up on Eagle Lake outside Fort Kent.

She said the nightly appearance of her dad in his plane was a highlight for local children, all of whom ran to the beach to greet the warden pilot.

She also remembers spending a lot of time in his Super Cub … though not all of that time was especially comfortable.

The problem: A Piper Super Cub seats two. There were four McPhees. And the seating arrangement always left young Sheryl in the same spot.

“Dad was in the front. Mother sat behind him, and my sister, who was 41/2 years younger than me, was on her lap,” she said. “I had to sit in the luggage compartment.”

But fly the McPhees did. While Jack did much of his work alone, he sometimes took family members along for memorable flights.

Like the day he piloted a Cessna 185 – outfitted with fish-stocking tanks on its floats – on a mischievous “bombing” run.

“He would fill the tanks with plain lake water and practice his accuracy,” Harriman said. “I remember one day he practiced on good friends of ours who were having a party across the lake.”

The friends, she said, received a brief shower when McPhee opened the tanks and released a fine spray of water on them.

“They got a little wet,” she said with a chuckle.

Al Cowperthwaite, the executive director of North Maine Woods Inc., uses a recurring word when describing McPhee.

Legend.

The intriguing part isn’t that Cowperthwaite uses that word. It’s that nobody debates it. Nobody.

“He was a soft-spoken, considerate man who cared for fish and wildlife, other natural resources and visitors,” Cowperthwaite said. “He always spoke up for what he believed to be best for the Maine woods.”

Mike Bourque is Peter Bourque’s son. Now in his 30s, he remembers the first plane ride he ever took. Jack McPhee was the pilot, and a Cessna 185 carried the youngster on a 15-minute jaunt he has never forgotten.

Mike Bourque came to know the man better over the years, and now truly appreciates what McPhee stood for.

“He was the state’s eye in the sky when it came to the woods,” Mike Bourque wrote earlier this week. “For those of us who don’t get to the woods of Maine as often as we might like, we always had some level of comfort knowing that Jack was literally watching over it all.”

Another colleague, Matt Libby, owns Libby Camps in Northern Maine. He calls McPhee – who owned and ran Macannamac Camps – his “next-door neighbor.”

For this pair of pilots, “next door” is 18 air miles.

Libby respected McPhee as a pilot … as a friend … as a man.

“He had real strong feelings on the Allagash and Baxter [State Park] and wildlife and fisheries,” said Libby, who also serves as chairman of the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife’s advisory council. “He was a real conservation-minded person.”

The two would often get together for coffee – sometimes at remote ponds each landed on after contacting each other on the radio, other times at McPhee’s home lodge on Haymock Lake.

“He was just a real nice guy. You couldn’t help but like him,” Libby said.

Dumond, as you might guess, agrees. McPhee’s advice did more than provide a career for him, you see.

“Warden pilots are a fraternity,” Dumond said. “That’s the best job anybody in the world ever had, and doing it with Jack was something else.”

Dumond had no trouble talking about McPhee on Wednesday. The memories, he said, come easily. The stories? There are just too many to tell.

But Dumond makes sure to tell you this.

“He was the best friend I ever had,” he said, softly.

“We had a lot of good times. It was a good time since Day 1.”

John Holyoke can be reached at jholyoke@bangordailynews.net or by calling 990-8214 or 1-800-310-8600.