Earl Cooley

A firefighter for the U.S. Forest Service, in 1940 Cooley volunteered for a new program: "Smokejumper". Cooley and one other man were the first to do it -- to fly over a remote forest fire in an airplane and parachute down to fight the fire. "Our training consisted of a man saying: 'This is your parachute. You know what fire is. We jump tomorrow'," Cooley remembered. He had never been in an airplane before. He did 10 practice jumps, and then he was dispatched to a real fire. The entire "team" consisted of Cooley and Rufus Robinson; Robinson jumped first. Cooley landed in a tree, but climbed down and by morning they had the fire under control. "I don't know why, but I was never afraid to jump," Cooley once said, even though in 1949, a team of 12 smokejumpers he sent in to a Montana fire were killed when the wind shifted, turning their escape route into an inferno. Cooley was exonerated of any wrongdoing, "but I still look at that map and have thought about it every day since then," he said in 1994. The only other thing he didn't like about the job: having to walk out of the fire area when the job was done. Cooley helped found the National Smokejumper Association and served as its first president. He retired from the Forest Service in 1975, and died November 9 at age 98. The First Smokejumpers Taken in Missoula, Mont., 1940: Back row: Glen Smith, Earl Cooley, Merle Lundrigan, Jim Alexander, Chect Derry. Kneeling: Rufus Robinson, Jim Waite, Frank Derry, George Case (district ranger, not a smokejumper), Dick Lynch, Bill Bolen. Their salary: $193 per month. (Photo: National Smokejumper Association) From This is True for 15 November 2009 Suggestions for further reading: The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire that Saved America by Timothy Egan Amazon Price: $17.82 Customer Review: As others have pointed out, this book is written with such a bias politically and ecologically that it suffers in the telling. Those gosh darn robber barons, ancestors of all of today's Republicans, robbing the good citizens of the US from their nat...   Young Men and Fire by Norman Maclean Amazon Price: $9.50 Customer Review: This book grabs you, by the heart as well as the mind. I found myself emotionally touched by the stories of those caught in the flames or narrowly escaping them. Maclean's words often connected with me at the gut level. I found myself flipping back...   On the Fireline: Living and Dying with Wildland Firefighters (Fieldwork Encou... by Matthew Desmond Amazon Price: $15.39 Customer Review: This book is an enjoyable read since I am a 31 year firefighter. Some of my best memories are fighting wildfire as a hand crew member, an engine compary firefighter, and a helitack crew member. This book describes the best and worst of firefighting...   The Thirtymile Fire: A Chronicle of Bravery and Betrayal by John N. Maclean Amazon Price: $10.20 Customer Review: John Maclean's The Thirtymile Fire is a can't-put-down book. His skill as a writer keeps the reader completely enthralled. If you like non-fiction this is a must read.   Under a Flaming Sky: The Great Hinckley Firestorm of 1894 (P.S.) by Daniel James Brown Amazon Price: $10.76 Customer Review: THis was a very well written, exciting true account of a mass fire. I highly recommend it.   Newsfeed display by CaRP

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