ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, June 24, 1996 TAG: 9606240157
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-3 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: RICHMOND (AP)
SOURCE: PETER BACQUE RICHMOND TIMES-DISPATCH
MEMO: NOTE: Shorter version ran in Metro edition.
TODAY'S SQUADRON has 17 pilots, six helicopters and six airplanes shared by three bases.
The year was 1969 and Hurricane Camille had just hit Nelson County, killing more than 120 people and leaving scores more homeless, hungry and helpless.
State Trooper James A. Nichols flew then-Gov. Mills Godwin to Nelson to inspect the damage, shoehorning a state police airplane onto an improvised landing strip: U.S. 29.
All around were helicopters - Army helicopters, Marine helicopters, National Guard helicopters, Coast Guard helicopters - and all landed easily in Nelson's inhospitable ruin.
``Mills Godwin said, `You state police need some helicopters,''' Nichols recalled.
Jim Nichols had just found a new career. In 1970, he became one of the department's first four rotary-wing pilots.
After 36 years with the state agency and 5,500 hours of helicopter flying, Lt. James A. Nichols, commander of the state police aviation unit, is retiring.
``I like the state police, and I love to fly,'' Nichols said, sitting last week in his office at the unit's combined hangar and operations center at Chesterfield County Airport.
``So putting the two together, and seeing it come from a part-time activity all the way through to what it is now - highly trained, professional police officers who fly missions involving emergency services - that's pretty gratifying.''
Nichols, 58, of Prince George, has had a leading role in raising the standards of state police aviation.
With 7,200 hours of flight time in helicopters and airplanes, Nichols holds airline transport pilot's licenses - aviation's Ph.D. - in both types of craft, as well as flight instructor certificates for the two categories.
For years, he was one of the department's two instructor pilots in airplanes.
``Once we started flying helicopters,'' he said, ``it was no longer a `sometime' position,'' and until 1983, he was the only pilot authorized to approve other aviators to fly the department's aircraft.
Meanwhile, Nichols was moving up the ranks, making sergeant in 1976, flying and coordinating training for the other aviators. He became first sergeant with the aviation unit in 1989, and last year he was promoted to lieutenant and took over as the unit's commander.
``I've always nicknamed him `Mr. Aviation,''' said state police Capt. Ken Paul, the aviation unit's former chief, ``because he really took [state police] aviation out of the Dark Ages with his expertise and his input, his enthusiasm and his dedication.''
``He was my mentor,'' Paul said. ``He taught me how to fly a helicopter. He's just the type of person you want flying a million-dollar helicopter.''
Medical evacuation flights have been particularly rewarding for Nichols. While straight police work often pits officers against difficult and dangerous people, ``I like the medevacs because ... you get into everyday helping people,'' he said.
Nichols joined the state police in 1960 and worked as a road trooper before beginning to fly for the agency in 1965. The aviation unit was established in 1983, and ``all my dreams kind of came to reality.''
Today the squadron has 17 pilots, six helicopters and six airplanes divided among three bases: Chesterfield, Manassas and Abingdon.
Since its formation, the unit has logged 49,895 hours on 27,966 missions.
Medevac flights for people in life-threatening circumstances - ``We always take the worst ones,'' Nichols said - constitute the largest number of those missions: 6,068. Just last year the unit's two medevac bases averaged a medical emergency flight every day.
State trooper-pilots also have flown 4,244 search missions, 4,110 highway patrol flights and 2,277 surveillance missions.
They helped recover $7 million in stolen property and locate $155 million of contraband: drugs and drug-manufacturing equipment, illegal weapons, hot money and illegal stills.
``You get tired, and I don't want to say `complacent,' but it gets old quick some days, turning circles for hours with sweat dripping down your neck,'' Nichols said.
``My philosophy that I try to pass on to the younger pilots is that every mission is important.''
LENGTH: Medium: 85 linesby CNB