WASHINGTON - U.S. Senator John Boozman (R-AR) recognized the service of Harold Beaver in ‘Salute to Veterans,’ a series highlighting the military service of Arkansans.

Beaver was born on December 12, 1946 and raised in Searcy, Arkansas. He grew up on a farm and attended Pleasant Plains school with only 15 other classmates. After graduation, he attended the University of Arkansas to pursue a degree in civil engineering. 

After completing a mandatory two years of ROTC, Beaver chose to pursue advanced ROTC. 

“Everybody who was looking to have some choices during the Vietnam era rather than being drafted, for the most part, chose to go into the advanced ROTC. That’s part of the reason, I had no idea what my draft number would be. It didn’t make any difference, so I chose to go in that direction.”

Just weeks after marrying his wife, he was assigned to March Air Force Base in Riverside, California for a six-week advanced ROTC summer camp. “It was an interesting experience,” he said recalling the extensive schedule that kept him very busy.

He graduated in May 1969 and was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the U.S. Air Force. His first active duty assignment was at Webb Air Force Base in Big Spring, Texas.

“The interstate wasn’t completed at the time, so we did a lot of country driving to get there,” he said.

He was selected for pilot training and learned to fly the T-41 “to weed out the folks” who weren’t cut out to be a pilot.

The next step in training was flying the T-37, which at the time was the first jet an Air Force pilot flew. It was side-by-side training with an instructor for more than four months.

“The 37’s got a stick so you had to learn that transition,” he said. “It’s the only plane in the Air Force, at that time, where you practiced spins, so we would go up to 22,500 feet, force it into a stall, create rotation and make it spin. There is only one spin recovery procedure. Nothing else works, other than that one, so you had to do it right once you got into a spin to get out."

One of his fellow students in the program was killed trying to get out of a spin. “It made me do some soul searching whether I wanted to continue with the program or not,” he recalled.

Beaver said the hardest part of learning to fly was the motion sickness, but he found ways to overcome the challenge.

Following training on the T-38 the pilots in the class were able to select their next flying assignment based on the class ranking. Beaver elected to be an instructor on the T-37 and stay at Webb Air Force Base.

He described the relationships he made with fellow students as the best part of pilot training, and how important that was for him to give those same experiences to new pilots as an instructor.

Flight classes were typically made of 25-30 students with 9-10 instructors.

Beaver and other instructors also trained a lot of foreign pilots. One of his best students was from Norway. While that student spoke English well, others weren't proficient in the language.

“It was kind of difficult trying to explain to them what to do in the plane while you’re flying."

There is one experience as an instructor that stands out.

“We were spinning,” Beaver said. He recalled the student tried to recover, but the plane ended up in an inverted spin. “Very uncomfortable situation, and his hands were locked on the stick, and I couldn’t get him to turn loose.” Beaver was beating on the student’s hands to no avail. “I grabbed his oxygen hose, squeezed it, and he couldn’t breathe, so he turned loose the stick to grab his mask and that’s when I got the stick and we recovered and came back immediately.”

Beaver had a five-year commitment to the Air Force, but he was able to get an early out as the Vietnam War was ending.

He and his wife returned to Arkansas where he spent a long career serving as a civil engineer for the Arkansas Department of Transportation.

Beaver says he hopes he made a difference and shared knowledge that helped his pilots. 

He recommends the ROTC program for those who feel called to serve. “It is something of an honor to serve your country, especially as a pilot, especially wearing the uniform of this country,” he said. 

“Harold Beaver made a tremendous impact on transportation in Arkansas, so I’m especially honored to help preserve these memories of his Air Force service, as well. He is a great example of someone who has found ways to use his talents to serve others throughout his lifetime. His stories are important to our nation’s history and I’m glad future generations will get to learn about the role he and other pilot instructors have had in ensuring the strength of our military,” Boozman said.

Boozman submitted Beaver’s entire interview to the Veterans History Project, an initiative of the Library of Congress’s American Folklife Center to collect and retain the oral histories of our nation’s veterans.