Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, February 2, 1992 TAG: 9202020130
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MONICA DAVEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: QUANTICO LENGTH: Long
VA. MARINE KEPT LOFTY COMPANY
FOR NINE MONTHS, Brian Lacks had one of the plum assignments in the Marine Corps: crew chief of the president's helicopter, Marine 1. His job took him around the country and around the world - a long way from his country roots in Clifton Forge.\ It's February 1991 and thousands of people stand behind a barricade on the White House lawn waiting for President George Bush to appear.
The war in the Persian Gulf has just ended and the crowd, clapping and cheering, is there to give Bush a big send-off to his first laid-back Camp David weekend in a while.
Marine Sgt. Brian Lacks is waiting, too, but on the other side of the barricade.
Standing straight and still at the door of Bush's helicopter, Lacks snaps a salute at the president as Bush casually climbs aboard.
Lacks, crew chief of the presidential helicopter Marine 1, gets on, shuts the door and prepares to lift away from the crowd.
"That was one of my most memorable lifts," Lacks said recently as he watched a videotape of the news broadcast from that day. "I had never in all my life seen so many people there to greet him.
"The joy and everything, I mean, people was yelling and screaming and waving signs and flags," he said. "And the president, it looked like he had massive relief on him."
During his stint in the Marine Corps' helicopter squadron, Lacks has transported presidents, vice presidents, Cabinet members and foreign dignitaries. He has traveled to Australia, Japan, Saudi Arabia and all over the United States.
It's been quite an odyssey for Lacks, a country-talking 24-year-old who, until his duty in the prestigious presidential squadron, had not wandered far from the mountains around his home in the Alleghany Highlands.
"I've gone from the little town of Clifton Forge - where I might have gone to see my aunt on the border of Kentucky - to going to many, many places," said Lacks.
"I'm stationed here in my home state, yet I get to see the world from here. Things like that, I never saw," said Lacks, whose phrases would sound corny coming from anyone else.
He has stories, too. Lots of them. And the tales pop up every once in a while during a daylong interview at his base in Quantico and his home nearby.
Lacks has just saluted the president and shut the helicopter door. He's putting his headset on and scooting into the cockpit, when he feels someone tap him on the back.
"I turned around and there's the president," Lacks recalls. "He goes, `I forgot my dog! I forgot my dog!'
Lacks dumps his headset, gets off the aircraft and locates the missing Bush pet, who's running around, carefree, near the White House.
Most of the time, dogs Millie and Ranger are a lot more cooperative, Lacks says. In fact, normally they run ahead and right up the steps without any encouragement.
Lacks is not required to salute the First Pets.
As a crew chief for Marine 1, Lacks' job went way beyond its most visible element: the salute at the start and end of a flight.
On the ground, the crew chief scrubs and shines the helicopter and keeps its parts in top shape.
"You have to be able to rig the flight controls . . . to pull transmissions off the helicopter, to pull the whole helicopter apart mechanically," Lacks explained.
In the air, the crew chief, who sits between the pilot and co-pilot, watches to make sure crucial parts - the engine instruments and landing gear - are functioning.
"He's kind of like an extra set of eyes and ears for the pilot and co-pilot," Lacks said.
Most important for the crew chief, perhaps, are the moments just before the helicopter leaves the ground.
The crew chief has the final say on the mechanical condition of the helicopter before it takes off.
"He's the last one to come off the aircraft and say, `Hey, it's good,' " Lacks said. "He signs his name on a piece of paper and once he signs his name, no one else goes on that plane to do anything else."
Being the one who promises that the president's helicopter is OK sounds like a high-stress job.
That doesn't weigh on Lacks.
"You try not to think about who you're inspecting the aircraft for," Lacks said. "By the time you get to Marine 1, you've inspected an aircraft for Margaret Thatcher, you've inspected it for a head of state, for a Cabinet member," he said. "You done it so many times to a point where you just concentrate on your job."
Lacks' helicopter has just arrived at Andrews Air Force Base.
President Bush is about to come down the stairs, off the aircraft, when Lacks and a Secret Service man get in each other's way.
"My feet got tangled and I fell right into the door," Lacks says.
Just as Bush starts down the stairs, Lacks manages to catch himself and pull off the standard salute "real, real quick."
That night, the CNN news clip of the president's arrival at Andrews conveniently misses Lacks' stumble and Lacks' wife comments on how good he looks in the shot.
"If you'd only been there," he tells her.
It's the only gaffe he can remember in his flights with the president.
Careful concentration prevents slip-ups, he says. Still, there's always that lingering fear that you'll trip or your hat will fly off in the chopper wind.
It's a long road to become crew chief for the president's helicopter.
For Lacks, that path began in Clifton Forge.
"Ever since I was a little old fellow, I'd seen the commercials [for the Marines] Saturday mornings watching cartoons," he said. Even then, he told his mother, Deanna, that he wanted to join one day.
He grew up "a regular kid," pumping gas at the Triangle Country Store and wrestling for Alleghany High School.
On a diet of ice cubes and oranges, Lacks weighed in at 132 pounds his senior year and won the Blue Ridge District championship. He hasn't changed much since; today, Lacks is a trim but muscular 150 pounds.
His father, Jimmy, worked on the railroad and taught Lacks to work on automobiles and build things.
That background may have pushed him toward aircraft electronic work - or "avionics" - his speciality after finishing Marine Corps boot camp in Parris Island, S.C.
From there, Lacks continued studying avionics and applied for the security clearance that could lead him to Quantico Marine Corps Base and the Marines' helicopter squadron.
Lacks says "a wing and a prayer" - and the fact that it's tough to get in trouble in a place like Clifton Forge - got him through the tedious security checks that only four people from a long list survived.
Five hundred Marines work on 30 aircraft that make up Marine Helicopter Squadron 1, or HMX-1, as the Marines call it. The operation fills five major hangars and 100 acres at Quantico.
Members of the squadron start off working on helicopters that are used to carry Marines, to conduct search-and-rescue jobs and, sometimes, to transport members of the news media.
Known as "green side" for the helicopters' colors, that's where Lacks started out as an "avionics man" in 1987.
After breezing through another security clearance, Lacks made it to "white side" four months later.
The white side, also called "The Cage" for its heavy security, deals with nothing but transportation for dignitaries.
"It's the glitz and glamour you see on TV," Lacks said.
The most prestigious assignment within The Cage is working on Marine 1 - the name for whichever helicopter the president is riding.
As an avionics man, becoming a crew chief for Marine 1 was not likely for Lacks. Usually, Marines specializing in mechanics, not electrical work, get the crew chief job.
But, after being nominated by his peers and approved by his superiors, Lacks managed to get the prestigious nine-month assignment last February as one of four crew chiefs for President Bush.
In fact, Lacks was the first avionics man ever to be crew chief for Marine 1, Marine Corps officials said.
Remind him of that and Lacks looks down, embarrassed. He claims to know plenty of Marines who are better- or more-qualified than he.
His co-workers, hanging around The Cage in work jump suits, whisper that Lacks is too modest.
His superiors don't whisper.
"He took it on his own to learn the mechanics," said Master Gunnery Sgt. R.A. Koebbe. "He knew the plane from head to toe.
"He's just a good-old home boy," Koebbe said. "He really brings personality to The Cage, and he's thought of as an expert in his field. We rely on him."
"I'm proud of him," the squadron's commanding officer, Col. Edward R. Langston Jr. said of Lacks. "Sergeant Lacks is a quality Marine."
It's Thanksgiving 1990 and Lacks isn't spending the holiday with his new wife.
President Bush is spending the day with U.S. troops in the Persian Gulf and Lacks is part of the helicopter team supporting him there.
Lacks, the Marine, is glad to be there.
"Here I am joining the Marine Corps to be a Marine and there's all my friends over there being Marines, and I'm [in the United States] carrying people back and forth from the airport," he says.
"My friends, all the other Marines that were my friends, that I missed, they were over there and I was here - safe.
"You talk about something that really worked on your head," he says.
"It was a big relief," Lacks says, to participate in events in the Persian Gulf, even for a short time.
Lacks compares his job in The Cage with high school wrestling.
"It's a rush," he said. "The only other rush that I ever felt in my life that was like that was winning the [district wrestling title]."
The fast pace thrills him. Like the others at HMX-1, Lacks keeps a suitcase full of clean underwear packed and always ready to go.
"All you've got to do is go home, kiss the wife, pat the dog and you're gone," Lacks said. "Sometimes you don't even get that long."
Ask him what the most exciting experiences in his life have been, though, and Lacks doesn't mention a chopper.
"One was getting married and the other will be having a kid . . . one of these days," said Lacks.
"I've got the best wife in the world," he said. "I love her to death."
Twenty-four-year-old Kellan, who married Lacks in July 1990, spent the past New Year's Eve putting together a jigsaw puzzle on the couple's dining room table.
Her husband was with the president on a trip to Japan and Australia.
Kellan Lacks, who works at an architectural firm, said she has dealt with her husband's frequent absences fairly well.
Plus, she's his biggest fan.
Every chance she gets, she records CNN video of her husband saluting the president. They have a whole collection of videotape and still pictures from magazines and newspaper photos.
Even the photos Brian Lacks gets cropped out of, Kellan Lacks likes to see.
"It's so neat to see the president in a picture in Time Magazine and know Brian was only a few feet away."
And she's among the first to hear all the stories.
The flight is over and it's time for the crew chief to clean up his aircraft.
In the cabin, Lacks finds a crumpled napkin full of grass clippings. It's by Barbara Bush's seat.
"Miss Bush, now she's a nice lady," Lacks says.
Apparently, the first lady knows how carefully the crew chief will clean his craft - right down to brushing the rug. She collects the clippings she tracks in from the White House lawn.
"She's kind of like the United States' grandmother," Lacks says. "She's so nice and sweet."
And the president?
"He's like your granddad," Lacks says. "I got so much respect for him.
"He can love you when you need to be loved, and he's got the stern hand when you need to be whipped."
Lacks' assignment to Marine 1 ended in December. His assignment with the squadron - and with the Marines - ends in June.
Because of cutbacks, Lacks cannot re-enlist with the Marines and keep working in the helicopter group.
He's not sure what he'll do next.
He'd like to be a Virginia State Police trooper or work for Delta Airlines. And if there were jobs, he'd like to come back to the Alleghany Highlands.
But he'll miss the Marine Corps.
"I've always wanted to be a Marine and I'm proud that I've been a Marine, and if things were a little bit more different, I'd stay a Marine till the day I died."
Lacks says he thought about that pride every time he stood, stiff and alone, outside Marine 1 to salute the president.
"This is going to sound corny, but I thought about all the people that died in the heritage that the Marine Corps has, that died for the eagle, globe and anchor - the Marine Corps emblem."
***CORRECTION***
Published correction ran on February 5, 1992 in the State edition.
\ Correction
In Sunday's edition, Col. Edward Langston Jr.'s name was spelled incorrectly in a photo caption that went with a story about a Clifton Forge native who served as crew chief for President Bush's helicopter.
\ Note- Langston's name was spelled correctly in the Metro edition.
\
Keywords:
PROFILE
Memo: Correction