Jesse Marcel Jr.Full-bird Colonel-Retired, served as a flight surgeon for 13 months in Iraq. He has also served his country for 38 years overall with honor and loyalty. Born 30 August 1936 in Houston, Texas, Marcel is a retired military officer who served as a medical officer in the United States Navy from 1962 to 1971 having received his specialty training in Otolaryngology while in the Navy. He joined the Navy in 1962 just in time to take part in the Cuban Missile Crisis by serving on board an attack transport ship, the USS Renville APA 227, which would have taken part in the invasion of Cuba, but the crisis was thankfully and peacefully concluded. When the invasion appeared eminent, Major Petska, who was our Marine Battalion Commander, boasted that he and Marcel would be toasting each other in the Havana Hilton Hotel. Marcel resigned from the Navy and opened his medical practice in Helena, Montana in 1971 and eventually joined the Montana National Guard as a medical officer. In 1975 he earned his Flight Surgeon Wings at Ft. Rucker, Alabama. In those days the flight surgeons were trained to solo helicopters. During his career in the National Guard, he was appointed State Surgeon of the State of Montana and retired from the military a second time on his sixtieth birthday in 1996. The Iraqi war (Operation Iraqi Freedom) required his returning to the military in September of 2004, and he spent the next 13 months as a flight surgeon for the 189th Helicopter Battalion in Iraq. He spent his 69th birthday in Iraq and eventually flew more than 225 combat hours in a Blackhawk Helicopter. Currently he is fully retired from the Army and also from civilian medicine. Jesse and his wife Linda live outside of Helena and look forward to being able to slow down and enjoy life to its fullest. As a child, Jesse Marcel had the rarest of experiences when his father presented him with actual fragments of the unidentified aerial craft that had crashed near Roswell, New Mexico in 1947. There have now been over 40 major media outlets that have interviewed Jesse about his most compelling personal account of having held those fragments in his own hands. This list includes the following: Major interest remains evident as over 30 contacts with national news media have been made over the last 14 plus months alone. |