The MRA Honor Guard

By Tim Kovacs, Founding Commander, Honor Guard; MRA President 1998-2000 

Influences and Inspirations 

The MRA Honor Guard was established as an unofficial service in 2000. The idea was not new. I have been able to trace the concept of it as far back as at least the late 1960s, when people including former MRA president 1970-1972 Dave Moore, then a junior MRA officer, suggested the concept at a meeting. In more recent years up through 2000, a few MRA members had quietly discussed the idea of an MRA honor guard. 

Losing Russ

In March of 1998, MRA’s Las Vegas Metro Police search and rescue officer Russ Peterson was killed by a falling ice block while belaying another member on a team training ice climb. He died still holding the belay to his unpaid SAR member. I knew Russ and attended his funeral in Las Vegas, at their SAR office-hangar. To honor Russ I chose to wear my sheriff’s office class “A” uniform, since I happened also to be a sworn (no longer career but still reserve) deputy. I did this because Russ was a full time police officer-SAR coordinator, and because neither my team nor the MRA had a dress uniform or anything that even came close. I was taken with the desire to give a formal appearance and respectful goodbye to Russ. For me this included a salute, which one does not normally do without proper uniform and “cover.” 

“Don’t lose your history”.

In June 1998 at the 40th Anniversary Conference of the MRA at Timberline Lodge, Mt. Hood Oregon, I was inducted as the incoming MRA president. I shared a drink or two at the lodge with Butch Farabee, a close-to-retirement National Park Service EMS/SAR chief in Washington DC, assistant park superintendent and former member of Southern Arizona Rescue Association. Butch had just finished his book on SAR in the national parks that his publishers titled “Death, Daring and Disaster.” He shared with me what a treat it was to research and write of the history of the national park rangers and SAR. We talked about how the MRA and NPS dovetailed in many areas and in fact shared founders. I talked of my quest to get a complete list of who had served as a previous MRA officer, and to capture the elusive and somewhat enigmatic history of our founders and our organization. I shared a recent attempt to do so by Tim Cochrane and the MRA that had fallen down.

He asked how we were doing on gathering and maintaining the MRA history. “Poorly,” was my answer, “but trying to get better.” He gave me a stern but impassioned look and said, “Don’t lose your history or your culture.” So began a long journey that continues today to recapture, save and honor the rich history of the MRA and its people. 

Tom’s death

In early 1999 while I was president of the MRA, Tom Frazer of El Paso County SAR, Colorado was our MRA secretary-treasurer. He was also our ASTM representative and managed our small stores. A quiet, timid but determined, dedicated and kind man, Tom passed away in office from pulmonary fibrosis – a terminal illness that we knew about but one that took him too suddenly. My wife at the time, Tami, and I flew to Colorado Springs to visit him in the hospital at what would be one of his final days. We returned several days later for the service. As president, I came to represent the MRA more so than my team, so my team field uniform was not appropriate. My sheriff’s uniform was certainly not appropriate either, as Tom was not a law enforcement officer and we did not routinely wear them for SAR in our county. I came dressed in my best black suit, tie and overcoat, with my president’s pocket badge 

showing. 

These two deaths left a mark on me, a sense that it was time to offer something in the way in which we paid respects to our members and our brothers and sisters in SAR when they pass.

I knew that the MRA has never gone for much pomp and circumstance. We have always been a simple group of mountaineers and rescuers who go out to do the job without fanfare. 

Yet as a full time police officer, as a career or volunteer firefighter, or certainly as a member of the military such a person would receive some sort of honors. If an MRA member died on duty or off duty, the sponsoring sheriff’s office or other agency might have a formal service, but history showed that did not usually occur for volunteers. A pity. 

Providing an honor guard seemed a good thing to do. I am very proud of the work that the MRA does and its units do, and we have reason to be proud. At our best we’re a cut above in the field. 

And our families give a lot. What do they get when an MRA member retires and dies after giving so much? What if they never served in the military, fire or law enforcement as a paid career? There are a LOT of people who have given years and years of their lives to unpaid SAR work and who otherwise received no honors. They don’t seek it, but is it wrong to have it? To offer it? 

I thought it a good thing to honor our own people, sometimes to honor them even if they didn’t die on a mission, such as passing away while still active on a team or after they “retired” from service. Perhaps their dedication and sacrifice of self and family was enough reason to honor them when they passed. Perhaps an honor guard might help the family understand what we speak so little or nothing of to them, what they don’t understand when we do try to explain it; what we try so hard all our lives to impart to those who do not fully grasp why we do what we do, for pay and for no pay. Perhaps the family might find solace and some joy in such a ceremonial explanation of our love and respect for our fellow rescuer, and by extension, the families’ sacrifice. I filed the information away, along with a hundred other ideas I had for the MRA. I figured I needed help, and I would know when it was time. 

Foreshadowing

In 1999, I was invited as MRA president to the Alpine Rescue Team of Colorado’s 40th anniversary. I was excited and looked forward to having a one-stop-shop to meet a few MRA past presidents in the same place and get more history lessons. Dave Moore, 1970-1972, was one of them. Introduced to him, I found a large and tall but distinguished gentleman with a pronounced handlebar moustache, a strong handshake, a ready smile – although somewhat impish – and a booming but controlled and carefully paced voice. His red suit coat told me a little of what personality might be coming too. We seemed to tap into one another with some quick quips and puns. I picked his brain, as I did others, about the past, his part in it, tidbits about the MRA of years gone by. He was one of several past presidents and founders of the MRA that I would cajole into getting active again with the MRA. Dave, I would later learn, took the bait more than the rest in several ways. Or was it that I took his bait?