Long-awaited ride: Men get their chance to go up in helicopter

Don Deschenes couldn’t wait to get settled in the humming, four-seat helicopter and take off skyward to see, for the first time, what his childhood home looks like from high above.

A brisk, but mild, breeze wafted across the runway on a recent autumn day at Nashua’s Boire Field, the day that Deschenes, along with friends George Emrich and Joel Valentino, had chosen for their long-anticipated venture into the wild blue yonder to experience life from yet another perspective.

Deschenes, 71, and Emrich, 47, met years ago at the Nashua Center on Simon Street, where they both take part in Jobs Etc., the agency’s vocational day program for adults with acquired or developmental disabilities. Valentino is Deschenes’ roommate of 11 years.

All three have plenty of experience viewing life from unique perspectives, and on this sparkling day, they added one more.

Deschenes and Emrich are developmentally disabled, and they’re also successful businessmen, thanks largely to what they’ve learned in the Jobs program.

Deschenes owns D&P Flowers – the “P” was his co-founder, who has since died – through which he sells flowers on street corners and at the Nashua Center. He also runs 50/50 raffles.

Emrich runs a car-detailing enterprise and also sells firewood and bottled water.

Deschenes paid for this scenic flight from his business’ profits, inviting Emrich and Valentino to share in his fun.

The entourage, which included Deschenes’ sister, Marge Fischer, gathered first in a small hangar, where everyone met the chopper’s owner, Bob Cloutier, and their pilot, James Easterbrook, a personable New Zealander who almost sings his words.

“Wow, this makes me so happy,” Emrich gushed with such feeling that tiny specks of people at the far end of the runway could share in his glee. “I’ve never been in a helicopter.”

“Just don’t push any buttons or pull any levers,” joked Bill Abbott, supervisor of residential programs at Nashua Center.

Soon, the group was on the move, making its way toward the blue and white Robinson R44 Astro, one of several “birds” that Cloutier, owner of C-R Helicopters, uses for flight training and to conduct business and pleasure charter flights.

“It’s so tiny,” Emrich remarked, squinting across the 100 yards or so that separated the group from the chopper’s mooring.

“It’ll get bigger, don’t worry,” quipped Frank McGrath, a Jobs Etc. program counselor who toted a couple of cameras.

“This has been on Don’s wish list for a while now,” McGrath said of the ride, nodding toward Deschenes, who, wrapped in a beige overcoat and topped by his favorite Bruins cap, appeared as happy as a clam in his motorized wheelchair. “He’s really looking forward to it.”

As Easterbrook fired up the chopper’s motor, several men worked as one to hoist Deschenes from his chair and into the front passenger seat, which for the next hour would be his window on the world.

As Emrich and Valentino clambered aboard, Fischer, accompanied by longtime friend Del Langille, a former Nashua educator, kept an eye on her brother’s persistent smile.

“He’s fascinated by all things mechanical,” she said as Easterbrook started the rotors spinning. “He was in a fixed-wing plane a long time ago, but I can tell he’s really enjoying this.”

Deschenes enjoys almost everything these days, but such wasn’t always the case. As a developmentally disabled youth coming of age in the 1940s and ’50s – a prehistoric era in the community-based services and inclusive public accommodations arena – Deschenes’ formative years were tough, but indeed, surrounded by the love and attention of a caring family.

His father rigged up a track-and-pulley system so Deschenes’ mother and sisters could move him around the old South Merrimack Road farmhouse.

But in a society devoid of today’s network of in-home, community-based services and agencies such as the Nashua Center, it became necessary for his parents to make the tough choice of sending him to the Laconia State School. He was 13.

“My mother cried for three years,” Fischer said. “The conditions (at Laconia) were terrible. We finally got him home when he was 16, but shortly after that, my mother died and there was no choice but to have admitted to Concord State Hospital.

“There just weren’t any other options,” she said, still staring at her brother’s smiling face in the front of the chopper.

“He was in Concord for 32 years. I’ll tell you, since he’s come out of Concord, his vocabulary has expanded by 100 percent. What a difference places like (the Nashua Center) make in people’s lives.”

Easterbrook gunned the engine and the little chopper lifted from the asphalt, turned about-face and headed off into the blue.

The ride would cover landmarks such as Deschenes’ old homestead, parts of Milford, Hollis and down into Nashua, where they’d wave down to the Nashua Center.

There wouldn’t be time to make it up toward Concord, but that was fine with Deschenes. As far as he’s concerned, there’s nothing worth seeing up there anyway.

Dean Shalhoup can be reached at 673-3100, ext. 31, or dshalhoup@cabinet.com.