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Article Published: Monday, October
04, 2004

Airborne office suits veteran

Qwest
copter pilot flies technicians to remote towers in the
Rockies

By Tom McGhee

Denver Post Staff Writer

Special / Matt
Staver

Lyle Borders ferries
technicians to microwave towers for Qwest, getting them
there faster than a SnoCat.

On
a brilliant Indian summer day, Lyle Borders threads Qwest's
helicopter through a tight notch framed by two power poles, and he
lands with hardly a bump on a mountaintop clearing.

An Army veteran who sharpened his flying skills in battle,
Borders ferries Qwest technicians to and from a string of microwave
towers in Colorado's Rockies.

The cramped cockpit of the chopper is his office, and on most
days it hangs between a royal blue sky and rugged peaks.

"I never have a problem wanting to come to work," Borders, 55,
said as the 650- horsepower Bell helicopter banked above a green
ridge splashed with bright gold aspen.

For the technicians who rely on Borders and two other pilots to
get them to the towers, the helicopter is the equivalent of a
contractor's pickup truck.

Advertisement

The company once used Sno-Cats to get technicians over
snow-clogged mountain roads to perform maintenance or repairs. The
63 towers are a vital part of Qwest's infrastructure, said Frank
Simanson, Qwest vice president for network operations in Colorado
and Wyoming.

At any given time, 250,000 conversations, along with a dense
string of data, flow across them. They also act as a backup when
telephone lines go down.

Routine maintenance helps to minimize the amount of time a tower
is inoperable and needs a more lengthy repair.

"This is part of our overall infrastructure that keeps our
customers up and humming," Simanson said.

Three- and four-hour trips have been replaced by quick flights
that last, in some cases, fewer than 30 minutes.

"We have only fired up our Sno-Cats once or twice in the last
three or four years," Simanson said.

When the wind bucks and sheets of snow shroud a tower, the
descent can be harrowing, said Elmer Hanks, a central office
technician who is frequently one of Borders' passengers.

Even when visibility is close to zero, Borders is able to get his
charges to their destinations, Hanks said.

But there have been times when the weather was so bad he had to
abort. Once in a snowstorm, said Hanks, Borders set down on a
baseball diamond in Empire. "When the weather gets bad and the
visibility goes to zero, it is scary. We never really had any close
calls. He always gets us in there," Hanks said.

Borders relies on skills he has honed over 33 years.

If there is peril, it is minor compared to that he encountered in
the skies above Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia during a six-month tour
in 1971. His part in the war ended when a .30-caliber bullet fired
from below blasted through the aluminum skin of his helicopter and
burned a path through his leg.

The round entered his calf, cut through nerves and muscle,
severed his femoral artery and came to a stop when it smashed into
the Army issue .45 strapped between his legs.

Borders' name might now be etched into the black marble of the
Vietnam memorial if another pilot riding beside him hadn't taken the
controls and flown the chopper to safety.

After they landed, doctors probed his wounded right leg and
shuttled him off to surgery.

He woke to find his leg sawn through above the knee. "At 20 years
old, you have this loss and think, 'What am I going to do now?"' he
said.

Any self-pity evaporated when he reached Fitzsimons Army Hospital
and found many others returning from Vietnam with wounds more severe
than his own, he said.

After a stint as an air-traffic controller in Longmont, he went
back to flying, and by 1990 he was working for US West, which was
later acquired by Qwest.

He arrives for work at a sprawling hangar at Centennial Airport
each day at 6:30 a.m. The company's chopper shares space with two
sleek private jets, also owned by Qwest.

But the pilots aren't confined to providing a shuttle
service.

Qwest sometimes cuts them loose to help emergency teams with
search and rescue efforts. In 1998, Borders rescued a hiker from
Byers Peak. The man had jumped from a high rock into what he thought
was a blanket of drifting snow. He landed on rock-hard ice and broke
his back.

Borders has taken government officials to fire scenes, dumped
buckets of water on raging infernos and delivered specially
insulated pads to protect sensitive telecommunications equipment
from fires.

But his missing limb is a constant, sometimes painful, reminder
of the war. In August, he fell, and his femur pierced the stump of
his leg.

He was out of work for more than a month.

Borders downplays his service in the aero-scouts, the
all-volunteer unit that performed some of the most dangerous duty of
the Vietnam War.

He ticks off the names of five of the 22 pilots in his unit, each
of whom died in battle or was listed as missing in action.

For his efforts, Borders received a Purple Heart, two
distinguished flying crosses and an air medal with a V for
valor.

In Iraq today, he said, Americans are dying once more, and their
countrymen are aware of those deaths. But the public has little idea
how badly many of those returning from war are injured.

If he could, he said, he would tell those who are now coming home
without limbs or otherwise maimed that those injuries don't have to
destroy their lives.

"Look at me - I have done everything I wanted to. I have had a
good life," he said.

Staff writer Tom McGhee can be reached at 303-820-1671 or [email-masked]
.

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