Photo: Jim Cherry of the National Smokejumpers Association speaks at Sunday’s service at Maplewood Cemetery. Shannon McFarlin photo.
By Shannon McFarlin News Director
Paris, Tenn.–Some 50 people from all over the country gathered Sunday for the solemn memorial service for Robert Bennett of Paris, a “smokejumper” who died at the too-young age of 22 in 1949 in the famed Mann Gulch Fire in Montana. He was among 13 young men who died in the tragedy, which prompted changes in the way that forest and wildfires are fought.
The National Smokejumpers Association hosted the event in commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the accident. The service for Bennett was held at his graveside in Maplewood Cemetery in Paris and similar services are being held for the other 12 men in other parts of the country.
Bennett was the son of Robert Guy and Annie Louis Moses Bennett and graduated from Grove High School in 1945. The family lived on Head Street in the Atkins-Porter Neighborhood. He had one brother Guy and two sisters, Jeannie and Joyce.
He enlisted in the U.S. Army right away after graduation from Grove, on May 30 and trained as a Medical Technician, was promoted to Staff Sergeant and was stationed at the 29th General Hospital in New Caledonia, an island in the southwest Pacific.
He was discharged a year later and returned to the U.S. Not long after his return, he enrolled as a student at the University of Montana forestry program, one of the best of the country.
He was trained as a smokejumper–an elite group of young men who parachuted into remote areas to provide the initial attack on hard-to-reach wildfires. Smokejumpers carried their heavy equipment with them—including axes and shovels—as well as their provisions on their backs. The heavy packs contributed to how dire the situation became for the men as the fire turned into a raging inferno.
Speakers at Sunday’s service included Jim Cherry and Fred Hatler, both of the National Smokejumpers Association, and Glenn Tanner, News Director of the Paris PI. Hatler is originally from Martin.
Because of the Mann Gulch tragedy, the Forestry Service “learned so many things about fire behavior” which has helped firefighters yet today, according to Cherry, who narrated the tragedy step-by-step for those gathered for the service.
Hatler noted, “The Mann Gulch Fire shocked our nation”, noting the young men who died were sons, brothers, husbands, cousins. “They were proto-typical all-American boys and all were very patriotic”.
At the gravesite, a bronze marker from the Smokejumpers was affixed to Bennett’s gravestone. A Memorial plaque is also in place at the site of the Mann Gulch fire.
During the ceremony, Bennett family members spoke about Robert and the tragedy. Earlier in the day, the First Christian Church in Paris hosted the Bennett family to remember Robert.