2R1, the airport, gets boost from Squires

BY HOLLY LELEUX-THUBRON

THE DAILY IBERIAN

JEANERETTE — Ken Squires of Jeanerette was the first pilot in the state to start crop dusting with a helicopter in 1978. In fact, a plaque still hangs on his wall from former Commissioner of Agriculture Bob Odom citing the department’s “recognition of proactive pesticide vision and methods” that Squires claims “turned the tide of pesticide hysteria in Acadiana.”

He’s dusted fields in several areas of the state, having moved here from Longview, Texas in the 1970s and finally settling down in Iberia Parish in 1988.

“I infiltrated the airline crop duster front lines ... and shouldered the almost overwhelming feeling for a great many years that I had indeed parachuted behind enemy lines,” he said. “They (airplane crop dusters in Iberia Parish) buzzed me in the fields, harassed me, talked trash, spoke untruths, tried to stop me, squash me and end my efforts. But I prevailed.”

Squires said his “more precise and more public friendly helicopter services” caught on, and today he, along with two other helicopter crop dusters, one of which was a student of his, dominate the “aerial crop care market.”

He said sugar cane and helicopters match up like peanut butter and jelly.

The large amount of the crop in the parish coupled with the heavily populated areas here make helicopter crop dusting ideal once the cane reaches heights too tall for the high-boy tractors.

“For the most part, helicopters do not have to fly over people’s houses and can, most of the time, turn around inside the crop field perimeters with lower operating speeds,” he said. “We are more precise at keeping the products we are applying inside the perimeters and not on the neighbors’ flowers and swimming pools and such.”

These days, Squires still can be found crop dusting when the sugar cane becomes “his” as he says. He also is spending any extra time and effort as an aviation advocate in the parish.

Most notably, Squires, working with the Iberia Parish legislative delegation and the staff at Acadiana Regional airport, secured $450,000 for the development of a T-hangar complex at LeMaire Memorial Airport.

He said he started his mission to resuscitate 2R1, the FAA code name for LeMaire, after purchasing the only private hangar located there.

“I was standing over there about a year ago, just me and the killdeers, and I got a good whiff of the deadness out there,” he said. “I looked around and thought to myself, ‘This is crap’.”

He thought for a while, he said, of whom he could inspire to fight for more development at LeMaire.

“I thought who could we get that knows some stuff about aviation and who wasn’t afraid to raise a little hell,” he said.

Squires admits at that time he was missing some small piece of confidence he needed to come forward and lead the fight himself.

Soon after, he joined the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association and was nominated by his peers within the organization to serve as the Airport Support Network representative for 2R1.

With the new post came a statistical package prepared by the association regarding small airports.

“I saw this stuff, that 300 dinky airports are closing every year just like the one in Jeanerette,” he said. “It’s hard to fight off these land grabbers and developers coming around and shaking big money.”

At that point, it all came together for him, he said.

Squires wants nothing more than a nice place to fly his airplane, he said, and would love to see some type of “man cave” at LeMaire for aviation enthusiasts in the area.

The tiny airport has a long way to go before it is eligible for federal funding from the Federal Aviation Administration and is completely safe from the “land grabbers” but Squires said he isn’t close to being done fighting.

“Truth is, I love a good fight,” he said. “I was raised on it. I instantly see all the injustices of the world and I see a lot of negligence out there. Everybody that was laughing at me when I started all this, sure isn’t laughing at me anymore. I don’t know exactly what I’ll be able to accomplish, but, there’s worse ways for a guy to spend his time.”