Editor's note: Three Linn County veterans have been honored this year with the title of Distinguished Veteran: Raymond Martinak, profiled on page A1, and Gene Peery and Frederick Schulze, featured here. The award from the Linn County Veterans Commemoration Association was instituted in 2001 to let the community salute a deserving veteran for his or her military service. The recipients are honored by being at the head of today’s parade, introduced at the VCA’s two announcer locations along the parade route, and given VIP seating in the reviewing stand.

Stationed just yards from the Bering Sea, and 70 miles from a Soviet military base in Siberia, Albany’s Frederick Schulze was used to living on the edge during the Korean War.

But one day, the Soviets brought their message almost within reach.

“One of their subs popped up just offshore and sat there,” explained Schulze, who spent a year staffing an Air Force early warning base in the far reaches of Alaska — nearly a decade before it became the 49th state.

The son of a Lutheran minister, Schulze was reared in Washington and Idaho. His father wanted him to become a schoolteacher and sent him to Concordia Lutheran School in Portland, where he studied German, Latin and Greek — which he said were not the least bit handy in the Air Force.

He enlisted in the 142nd Aircraft Control wing of the Air Force on his mother’s birthday, Sept. 21, 1950, and received his draft notice on his birthday, a week later. Fortunately, Schulze also had mechanical experience and he was put in charge of the outpost’s motor pool and aircraft runway.

“There were about 60 of us in all,” Schulze said. “Our job was to monitor the Russians, and they monitored us.”

Daily life revolved around four large Quonset huts, but staff lived in smaller, four-man buildings that featured thick insulation under a canvas cover.

“The record low the year I was there was 80 below, and there were two weeks when it never got above 60 below,” Schulze said. “There were times we never shut off the Caterpillar dozer’s engine.”

Schulze was also in charge of maintaining all of the generators that kept the radar units working and stocking up fuel for heating the buildings. Fuel was shipped by barge in 50-gallon drums.

“Diesel gelled up and wouldn’t work in the stoves, so we had to burn jet fuel,” Schulze said.

The nearest Alaska community was Kotzebue, which today has a population of about 3,000 but in 1950 had about 400 residents. It featured the only hotel/restaurant and hospital for many miles.

The severe cold was hard on everything — human and mechanical, Schulze said. At times, outdoor activity was limited to 15-minute stints due to the numbing weather.

As remote as it was, the area was the site for a movie called “Arctic Flight” that starred Wayne Morris, Alan Hale Jr. — who from 1964 to ’67 played the Skipper on the “Gilligan’s Island” TV show — and Lola Albright. The film crews’ battery-operated equipment didn’t work well in the frigid weather and the Air Force was asked to help out.

Schulze and his team provided power for the film. He has a scrapbook filled with photos of the stars and crew members. “Alan Hale was a big man, a real nice guy,” Schulze said.

One vivid memory was when Schulze was using a 6x6 truck to carry a new piece of equipment to the base and it broke through the ice. “We hooked the Cat to it, cut around the rear wheels and pulled it out as a block of ice with the dozer,” Schulze said.

After his stint in Alaska, Schulze was transferred to Larson Air Force Base in Moses Lake, Wash. He was discharged in 1953 but remained in the National Guard another four years.

Schulze lived for many years in Hermiston, where he was a volunteer firefighter and a photographer/crime scene recreator for the police department. He moved to Albany in 1962 and worked as a mechanic and in the sporting goods department at Fred Meyer for many years.

In his younger years, Schulze raced motorcycles. He still enjoys gunsmithing and repairing fishing rods and reels.