Maj. Gary Lewis: A Civil Air Patrol Story of Dedicated Service

Welcome to the Civil Air Patrol America 250 series. We will be highlighting American hero members and their service leading up to the America 250 celebration. This is the fifth feature of that series: Maj. Gary Lewis of CAP’s Missouri Wing. Catch up on the entire series here.

June 10,1969.

For Civil Air Patrol Major Gary Lewis, the date is burned in memory, searing like the shrapnel wounds he suffered during a fierce North Vietnamese rocket attack on his U.S. Marine Corps unit in Quang Tri province, near the DMZ.

“That day changed my life,” the Purple Heart recipient said.

That day, like his life, is a story of dedicated service and Divine Providence that began well before — and continued long after — that hellish night in Quang Tri.

In 1962, 16-year-old Gary Lewis couldn’t leave St. Louis fast enough.

“I was trying to get away from home desperately because I had a bad situation going on there,” he said. “The Cuban missile crisis was going on in October, and I got supercharged to get away by joining the military, but I was too young.

A year later, he enlisted in the Marines.

He wasn’t sure what his job would be in the corps, but at 13, he became a licensed ham radio operator.

In the days before cell phones and the internet, ham radios offered an
“invigorating” window on the world.

“Back then, it was exciting just to get out of your own neighborhood,” he said. The ham experience offered a vision for his military future.

“I thought I was going to get a job as a radio operator on a transport aircraft. That was really what I wanted to do.”

At Millington Naval Air Station in Tennessee, he scored highly on mechanics and electronics aptitude tests. The officer handed him a sheet of paper and asked him to read.

“Your diction is good,” the officer told him afterward. “Here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to make you an air traffic controller.”

“I had no idea what that was,” Lewis said. Little did he know that moment would define his professional life for more than three decades.

But first, as for many of his generation, Vietnam intervened.

When he first arrived in country, Lewis served in a Marine Air Traffic Control Unit, providing air traffic services for Quang Tri and its cities, Dong Ha to the north and Khe Sahn to the west.

The siege, one of the most heroic actions in American military history was different, he said, from the siege at Dien Bin Phu in 1954, which led to the withdrawal of defeated French forces from the country.

“The reason [the French] gave up was they couldn’t get supplies in there,” Lewis said. “The thing that we had a Khe Sahn and all those other places was GCA (Ground Control Approach). GCA provided much-needed supplies to American forces.

In February 1969, a call came out for volunteers to serve as gunners on helicopters. Lewis went, flying supplies, troops, and medical evacuations.

“We were the heavy lifters as far as getting supplies in and out, because it wasn’t safe to go there any other way,” he said. He flew more than 300 missions. For him, it “was a way to give back.”

He then moved on to full-time Medevac, where he learned a key lesson.

“When the enemy is in range, so are you,” he said.

His first mission was uneventful.

“The second changed my life,” he said.

By the time he was 16 or 17, Lewis remembered, he had seen every war movie ever produced during World War II and Korea — starring John Wayne, Audie Murphy, Aldo Ray, and others.

“I was really gung-ho and super excited about doing that,” he said. But on that second mission, “In a moment, I learned a very hard lesson.

“There’s somebody out there who would love to see you dead,” Lewis said. “For the first time, probably ever, I got scared.”

Several more missions followed. He was shot down once and ran out of fuel once. Then came the night of June 10, 1969.

It was a hot, sticky night as Lewis lay in his hooch. Sleep was nearly impossible with the heat, humidity, and incoming rocket fire. A rocket exploded some 35 feet away.

He’d seen near-death stories on TV before, where stories of seeing light in a tunnel, or Jesus were common. Lewis, who had accepted Christ as a teen in 1963 at a St. Louis tent revival, saw none of that.

“I got scared because I wasn’t experiencing anything that I had seen on TV,” he said. “So, what seemed to be — I don’t know how long — that senseless feeling was, the first sense that came back was hearing.”

The first thing he heard were the cries of his friend, Jim Miller, who was five feet away when the fateful blast hit.

Miraculously, Miller survived and spent a year at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center and other places. And despite all his wounds, Lewis would not only survive, but he returned to duty a short time later, recounting stories of soldiers dying in his arms on the battlefield.

By the way, Lewis was often chosen for Medevac missions for a reason: “They chose me [they said] because I was so lucky.”

A chief warrant officer at the end of his active duty, Lewis has been part of the Civil Air Patrol mission for 16 years. He also served in the Marine Corps Reserves. He now serves as emergency management director for Kimberling City, Missouri and the assistant emergency management director for Stone County, Missouri.

He and a group of CAP members revived the local squadron, now known as the Table Rock Lake Composite Squadron. The flourishing unit includes 60 cadets. He is the Missouri Wing’s assistant director of communications and serves his squadron as its search and rescue officer and advisor to the commander.

His work in CAP has centered on communications.

“His professional abilities have played a key role in making sure our [communications] assets are ready,” said Lt. Col. Raun Hamilton, the wing’s emergency services director. “Gary is just a very dependable CAP member, who seems to always be there when needed for our comms needs.”

Hamilton praised Lewis, citing his humility, deep faith, and “servant’s heart.”

Health permitting, Lewis may return to Vietnam with a group of students from College of the Ozarks, but he has already taken what he called “a healing trip” as part of an Honor Flight with other veterans to see the war memorials in Washington D.C., including the Vietnam War Memorial.

A story from that trip speaks volumes about Lewis and his servant’s heart.

Standing near the back of the line to board the flight home, one of the trip’s coordinators said, “Thank you for your service.”

Lewis’s response?

“You’re worth it.”

The woman responded, “No one ever said that to me before.”

She then recounted her husband’s Vietnam-era story. He suffers from PTSD, she said, because of the way he was treated when he returned home from that unpopular war. Lewis’s response perhaps speaks to what drives his heart of service in CAP and beyond. For him, people are worth it.

Asked why he serves in CAP, Lewis was straightforward.

“I’m kind of a driven individual,” he said. “I’m not the kind of guy who can go fishing and sit on a rocking chair. I gotta be involved in stuff.”

And it’s about structure, for cadets and adult members alike.

“It all ties together,” Lewis said. What your personal life is, your spiritual life, it all ties together.”

Asked what he hopes his legacy will be, Lewis said, “that [I] was firm, friendly, and fair. And that he loved the Lord with all his heart, mind, soul, and strength.”

Civil Air Patrol’s adult ranks consist of volunteers from all backgrounds, including service in the military, like Maj. Lewis.

His communications skills are of great benefit to CAP — the official civilian auxiliary of the U.S. Air Force, which offers hands-on training, mentorship, and service opportunities in support of emergency services and disaster relief nationwide.

To learn more about membership and find your local unit, visit gocivilairpatrol.com.