At 5 p.m. on Thanksgiving Eve 2006, Maj. Chris Cole pulled into his driveway in York after a 72-hour shift at the Maine Air National Guard Wing in Bangor. As he greeted his children, his on-call cell phone rang. Instead of scooping up the children and beginning his turkey and cranberry sauce-filled holiday, he “took care of business.”

On the other end of the phone line, an officer from McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey said heavy crosswinds were threatening the launch of one of their tankers scheduled to refuel a C-17 cargo plane in midair. Time was of the essence. One of the American soldiers on board had been badly burned while fighting in Iraq and was being flown nonstop from Germany to San Antonio for treatment.

Within five minutes, Cole, who schedules missions for the Northeast Tanker Task Force, which includes Bangor, had alerted that night’s standby crews to prepare for the mission.

As the window to launch expired for the McGuire team, Bangor’s KC-135 refueling tanker took to the sky, completed the mission and helped save the soldier’s life.

“I don’t think we tend to talk a lot about what we do,” Cole said. “It’s more something you keep to yourself, but … every mission is important.”

On Sunday, the Maine Air National Guard celebrates 60 years of executing missions quickly, efficiently and accurately. Feb. 4, 2007, marks the 60th anniversary of the Guard’s inception at Camp Keyes in Augusta. Bangor’s 101st Air Refueling Wing will celebrate its own 60-year milestone on Monday.

“The key to Bangor ‘s success is we’ve done it right, done it on time, and done it safely,” said retired Maj. Gen. Nelson Durgin, former adjutant general for the Maine National Guard.

In 2003 Bangor assumed the duty of scheduling all refueling flights for the Northeast Tanker Task Force Trans-Atlantic Air Bridge which includes Bangor, Pease ANG in New Hampshire, Niagara ANG in New York, Pittsburgh ANG in Pennsylvania and both the McGuire ANG and McGuire Air Force Reserve units in New Jersey.

All six locations collaborate to complete three key refueling missions: providing a place for aircraft to land and refuel, midair refueling of fighter aircraft squadrons, and midair refueling of cargo planes carrying anything from soldiers to bullets to bottled water over the Atlantic. The tankers rendezvous with aircraft that need refueling just northwest of Goose Bay, Labrador, and over Nova Scotia.

“When the Air Force withdrew air refueling wings to the center of the country, it only left the perimeter with National Guard flying tankers…” Durgin said. “Bangor joined them because it’s on the right path, right in the Great Circle, the shortest path from the continental United States to continental Europe .”

As the active Air Force continued to downsize under the Department of Defense’s Base Realignment and Closure plan, four bases that had a direct effect on Bangor’s operation closed: Dow AFB in 1968, Loring AFB in 1994, Pease AFB in New Hampshire in 1991 and Plattsburgh AFB in New York in 1992.

“Our role over the years has been to assume more responsibility because we’re all that’s left,” said Col. Stephen Atkinson, Bangor wing commander. “We have a real strong work ethic and desire to be the best and get the job done in an environment of shrinking resources.”

Out of the six participating units in the task force, Bangor ‘s wing performs 20 percent of the refueling missions.

“We offload more fuel than any other Guard unit in the nation,” Lt. Col. Mark Twitchell said about current operations. “And we come close to rivaling some big super [active duty] refueling wings.”

Yet the high demands on Bangor after the BRAC closures only escalated after the national tragedy on Sept. 11, 2001.

After the world changed

“The whole crew realized that day that the world as we had known it had changed,” said Col. John D’Errico, vice wing commander in Bangor. D’Errico was piloting one of five Bangor-based tankers refueling fighter aircraft that were patrolling American air space. He watched the plumes of smoke rise over New York City and sweep toward the Atlantic on the fateful morning.

“The cockpit was real quiet,” said Lt. Col. Brent Stewart, director of current operations and another Bangor pilot in the air that day.

Scanners that transmitted police and fire traffic on the ground broadcast the eerie chaos of the events below to the pilots in the air.

Within three hours of the attacks, 98 percent of the wing’s members had reported to the Bangor base prepared to perform any task, Atkinson said.

“We essentially became a 24-7 operation that day,” he said. “After that day we’ve understood how important we are, the National Guard, to national defense.”

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have directly involved more than 80 percent of the Maine National Guard members, which include Air Guard and Army Guard units, Durgin said.

As Bangor’s responsibility has increased, many guardsmen who used to work one weekend a month and two weeks a year have been called up to active duty. The wing now employs approximately 350 full-time guardsmen, and another 175 work temporarily full time, said Maj. Debbie Kelley, the community manager at the wing.

Since Sept. 11, the Bangor wing has pumped approximately 7 million gallons of jet fuel into military aircraft, and since the Iraq war started in 2003, the wing has flown more than 1,300 refueling missions, Twitchell said.

While flying and maintenance crews are frequently deployed for refueling missions, other groups on the base have taken an active role in the war effort as well.

In January 2006 alone, the Air Guard deployed more than 30 individuals from three months to a year in support of the war, Kelley said.

Members of the wing’s Medical Group have been deployed, often one at a time, to Landstuhl, Germany, where they work in a hospital.

The Bangor medical team has treated thousands of war patients, both soldiers and civilians, during its deployments. One team recalled with pride its care for two Iraqi civilians who had been seriously injured. Iraqi medical professionals frequently do not treat critically injured patients because they lack malpractice insurance. The 101st doctors saved the two men, and as a thank-you gesture, the families gave Americans information that led to Saddam Hussein’s capture.

In addition to the medical group, many wing security forces airmen and firefighters have deployed overseas, as well as civil engineer airmen and even chaplains.

Traditional tensions between active duty and Guard troops have eased in this war, Durgin said. Today, general support for troops has been strong because of the Guard’s active involvement in the national forces. Airmen and soldiers fighting today don’t just live isolated lives on bases; they are now our next-door neighbors, our local businesspeople and public servants, he continued.

“There’s always been some resentment from the active duty,” Senior Master Sgt. Dennis Wellman said. “Now they’re depending on us. A majority of the Guard and Reserve units bring something different to the table, and the Air Force is recognizing that and depending on that.”

Humanitarian efforts

Chief Master Sgt. Deborah Smith has spent 27 years in the military, but none of her medical expertise or her wartime experience prepared her for the heartbreak she has witnessed on peacetime missions.

In 2000, the 101st Medical Group traveled to Limpira, Honduras for two weeks to teach preventive medicine and treat residents in the surrounding villages.

Hundreds lined up at makeshift clinics to receive immunizations, dental exams, optometric evaluations, and public health education.

One girl around age 14 regained her vision after the 101st doctors performed cataract surgery.

“Her family was with her and when she was finally able to see, she just started hugging all of the nurses that were there. She just kept hugging them,” said Smith, the chief of the Medical Group.

This mission proved that smiles and hugs are the world’s universal language, she said.

In January 1998, the group served a mission in its own backyard. During the state’s devastating ice storm, the wing transformed its hangar into an emergency shelter for nearly a week.

The unit’s civil engineer group traveled to Guatemala in 1994, where it constructed facilities to alleviate sanitation problems in the country, according to Wellman.

One of the Guard’s most recent humanitarian missions brought them to hurricane-ravaged Louisiana and Mississippi in 2005.

“You’ve trained to go to war, but you’re not ready for the devastation a natural disaster can create,” Smith said.

The wing’s Medical Group and Security Forces Squadron joined volunteers who helped survivors sift through the rubble and memories Katrina left in its wake and begin anew.

“When I joined 27 years ago, I was trained to treat an adult,” Smith said. “I was going to be treating a soldier injured in the line of duty, not a child involved in a hurricane, or a child injured in Iraq. It has changed our culture.”

Cohesion with community

Three days after Gene Curless graduated from high school in 1959, his father told him to go out and find a job. Opportunities in Caswell Plantation in Aroostook County at the time were slim. Curless worked construction and took a civilian position at Loring Air Force Base, but within two years, packed up his 1958 white and turquoise Ford Interceptor and headed to Bangor.

Like thousands of Maine men and women, Curless, now 66, found stability and competitive wages with the Guard, staying on for a more than 20-year commitment.

The average Bangor wing member stays with the unit for 27 years, which results in a highly trained and experienced work force that takes pride in its work.

“That’s what makes the unit stand out in the first place,” Atkinson said. “Yankee work ethic.”

Bangor’s high maintenance standards provoke “professional jealousy” among other wing commanders, Atkinson said.

“Our maintenance crews take a personal interest in the aircraft, as if it were their personal vehicle,” Atkinson said. “It’s like they are buying a new car. They clean the dashboard all up and everything.”

The MAINEiacs’ pride in their professional duties is handed down from generation to generation.

“As we approach a 60-year point, that’s a considerable amount of generation turnover,” Atkinson said. “There is a strengthened desire for people to come out here to do just as good of a job as Mommy or Daddy or Grammy or Grampy.”

The Guard now employs more than 900 men and women from towns from Kittery to Fort Kent. In a nation where military recruiting and retention are a challenge, the Bangor wing has managed to keep its enrollment stable, which Atkinson said is quite a feat.

The Guard payroll brings millions of dollars into the local economy through real estate, car and retail sales, Durgin said.

“Having the Guard here has really been a big boom for the city,” he said.

Every day many U.S. and foreign military aircraft stop in Bangor to refuel before flying over the Atlantic. In 2006, the Guard tracked 578 planes that landed in Bangor, carrying approximately 9,200 crew members and passengers, Kelley said. The total counts only planes that registered with base personnel during normal business hours and crew and passengers that spent the night. Between hotel rooms and the troops’ daily spending allowance, these abbreviated stays pumped more than $600,000 into the local economy in 2006, Kelley said.

The city saves more than $1 million a year in its operation of Bangor International Airport because the Guard assumes part of the responsibility for airport safety and maintenance, according to BIA Director Rebecca Hupp.

The Guard provides all firefighting services for the airport, both equipment and personnel. The wing also owns and maintains a large fleet of snowplowing equipment driven by city employees, Hupp said.

“The support from the local community is critical in making things work here,” Atkinson said. “The airport and the city working together with us is critical to our success. We really need to have the community on board.”

Developments on the horizon at the Bangor wing will help ensure its existence for many years to come. In addition to building a new base exchange, reconstructing an aircraft ramp and applying for funding to replace the existing hangar, the wing will begin replacing its 10 KC-135E model tankers with a newer KC-135R in April.

“The engines are bigger, faster and more powerful,” said Lt. Col. Gerry Lincoln, director of the Northeast Tanker Task Force. “It has more capabilities, it can climb quicker, it’s quieter, can offload more fuel, will require less maintenance and is a lot more fuel-efficient.”

The wing is confident it will be flying in 2012 when the conversion to the newer aircraft model will be complete under guidelines set by BRAC law. The current refueling mission is well-suited for its location in Bangor, Atkinson said.

“Every single state has a flying unit,” Lincoln said. “And in Maine this is it.”