Early NMC Civilian Flight Training Recalled
By Antoinette "Toni" Hagener
Fall 2002

A lecture program at the Heritage Center in July brought together flight instructors Gene and Mitch Etchardt and two summer of 1940 CPT and NMC students. Featured speaker, Gene Etchardt, outlined the reason for the course offering and the rather primitive conditions under which the intensive 70-hour training period was conducted. Using every bit of daylight and good weather conditions, in-flight training typically started at 4 a.m. and continued until sundown. The purpose of the course was to prepare a group of people with basic flight training in the event of participation in VVWII.

Glenn Morgan, son of early NMC professor Dr. E.A. Morgan, visiting in Havre at the time of the lecture, was a student at NMC in mechanical engineering at the time the CPT course was offered. After completing his course here and getting his private license, he took cadet training at Fort Lewis, Washington, Amarillo, Texas and Missoula, Montana.

In the interim he worked at the Bremerton, Washington shipyards doing sheet metal repairs on ships - some of them returning from the Pearl Harbor attack. After the war he returned to Bozeman for more engineering courses but was lured back to Bremerton to work for 9 years as a Design Director. He moved on to Washington, D.C. to work in that same capacity on Air Launch Weaponry until his retirement in 1975. He now resides in Florida but regularly visits in Montana.

The second member of that summer of 1940 class in attendance at the lecture was Verne Olson of Havre. Upon completion of the NMC course, Verne entered the Army Air Corps and has his talents and training put to use within the Communications divisions serving in North Africa, Sardinia, Corsica, and Okinawa.

The post war period saw him attending Purdue University in Indiana, majoring in electrical engineering. He was employed with the steel mills in Gary, Indiana for a few years but returned to Havre in 1950 to enter into business first with his father and later with his brother. Deeply involved in church work, he assisted in organizing Mayor James Davey's Prayer Breakfast in October of 1962 which featured U.S. Marine Corps Lt. General Mervin Silverthorn as the principal speaker and also involved NMC Professor Bill Lisenby as a participant.
  

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