Old Missoula

 

Doctor Leo P. Martin – 1^st. Paramedic

 

 

The following article appeared in The Montana Standard, October 28, 1942.

 

Former Anaconda Doctor Killed

 

Dr. Leo P. Martin Airplane Victim

 

Captain Leo P. Martin, widely-known former Anaconda and Philipsburg physician and surgeon, who has been serving with the Army medical corps at the Walla Walla Wash., Army air base since last June, was killed in the crash of a commercial cabin trainer plane near Walla Walla Sunday night.

 

According to an Associated Press dispatch, Captain Martin and his pilot instructor, V. W. Bilderback, were killed when the plane struck a power line and crashed in flames. Officials at the flying school are reported in the dispatch to have said that trees apparently obscured the power line and the gasoline tanks exploded when the ship hits the line.

 

Captain Martin was born in the Flathead country of Montana in 1903. He received his medical education at Craighton University in Omaha, Neb., graduating in 1927.

 

He received his license to practice medicine in Montana in 1934. Going to Anaconda that year he became associated with the late Dr. Floyd J. Malloy. He practiced in Anaconda until 1937, when he moved to Philipsburg.

 

After practicing in Philipsburg for about two years, he moved to Missoula, where he practiced until June of this year when he enlisted in the Army medical corps.

 

He was a member of the American Medical association, the Montana Medical association and the Mount Powell Medical society, which is composed of physicians of Deer Lodge, Granite and Powell counties.

 

Captain Martin was married in Missoula in 1941. Surviving in addition to his widow are a one-month old child and two children by a former marriage. He was the uncle of Mrs. Owen Grinde of Butte.

 

 

 

 

One of the things the article failed to mention was Dr. Martin’s groundbreaking career as a para-rescue doctor. Missoula’s connection with para-rescue work came about as a result of the initial work done in smokejumping for the U.S. Forest Service in Missoula beginning in 1940.

 

Experiments with parachutes and jumping to fires began in 1939 at Winthrop, Washington on the Chelan National Forest. Cargo dropping experiments had been ongoing since at least 1936, but live dropping to fires was considered too dangerous.

 

However, in 1939 a determined group of people in Region 6 – the Northern Pacific Region – forged ahead with the idea of firefighting with smokejumpers when they used a contractor and professional jumpers to prove that it was possible. By the end of 1939 they proved it could be done.

 

“A small group of professional jumpers, with Frank M. Derry in charge, conducted a number of dummy tests and approximately 60 live jumps were made, largely by employees of the contractor [Eagle Parachute Company of Lancaster, Pennsylvania]. Toward the end of the experiment several Forest Service employees were allowed to jump into both open-field and timbered areas.[1]

 

In 1940 smokejumpers from Region 1 were used on nine fires, with the first jumps done on July 12 by Rufus Robinson of Kooskia, Id. and Earl Cooley of Hamilton, Mt.

 

“Of historic note also is the first successful ‘rescue jump’ made by Smokejumper Chester N. Derry 3 days later, to an airplane crash in the Bitterroot Forest. This last incident, together with the subsequent parachute training of Dr. Leo P. Martin of Missoula as the first ‘jumping doctor,’ marks the initial milestone in rescue jumping . . . [The Bitterroot crash was a Travelair piloted by Bob Maracich who was killed and dropper Del Claybaugh injured[2]]

 

“An interesting sidelight – and one with far-reaching effects – pertains to the visit of four U.S. Army staff officers to the parachute training camp at Missoula in June. One of these, Major William Cary Lee, later employed Forest Service techniques and ideas in organizing the first paratroop training at Fort Benning, Georgia…

 

“Major Lee subsequently commanded the 101^st Airborne Division which he took to England and trained for the Normandy invasion. He became the first Chief of the Airborne Command and is regarded as the unquestioned father of U.S. airborne doctrine.”[3]

 

Dr. Martin, one of nine children, was born in Coram, Montana, the son of Melvina and Gaspard Martin who were early settlers in the Flathead near Columbia Falls. He married Bernice Hagens of Missoula in 1941.

 

Dr. Martin was the subject of an article that appeared in January, 2012, Smokejumper Magazine by Jack Demmons of Missoula.[4]