| PHS grad dies as pilot in Afghanistan |
By Joel Stottrup A 1974 graduate of Princeton High School died in a plane crash on Oct. 12, United States time, while part of a three-person crew operating a surveillance plane over Afghanistan.The deceased, Randy Bergquist, 53, of Jacksonville, Fla., had attended Princeton Public Schools from eighth grade on after coming here from his native Bemidji. Steve VanHooser, Princeton, remembers Bergquist as a fellow wrestler and football player in school and hanging out with him as a friend. Bergquist is survived by his wife Pam, and their son Matt, 18, both of Jacksonville; by Randy’s mother Ruby, Bagley, Minn.; Randy’s brother Mike, Princeton; and sister Penny, Sauk Rapids. A memorial service was conducted for Bergquist on Wednesday last week in Jacksonville, during which about 300 attended. Wife Pam said by telephone that there were attendees who came from Tennessee, North Carolina, Alaska and one who came home from Afghanistan to be there. A second memorial service will be conducted at Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in Henning, Minn., located about 45 miles north of Alexandria, this Saturday at 3 p.m. Henning is where Pam is from and the church is where the two were wed in 1982. That service will be the time for the “brotherhood” who had worked with him in Alexandria and his friends from Minnesota to pay tribute, she said. Bergquist, after graduating from PHS, gave up a college wrestling scholarship to go into the Marines. He served three years in the Marines and did guard duty at the embassy in Geneva, Switz., during the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks, Pam noted. It was in Switzerland where he did hang gliding, that he got interested in piloting, she said. After leaving the Marine Corps, Bergquist earned his ratings in Tulsa, Okla., to be a pilot and flight instructor. He next worked for nearly eight years as a charter pilot and flight instructor in Alexandria, and that was where he met Pam in the early 1980s. He next worked as a pilot for the U.S. Customs Service for 20 years in Florida and retired from there. His final career move was to work for Lockheed Martin contractor, Avenge Inc., that worked for the Army doing NATO surveillance missions. The crash site was in a mountainous region of northeastern Afghanistan. Pam said she learned on Oct. 13, U.S. time, that ground personnel had lost contact with the Army reconnaissance C-12 Huron twin-engine turboprop plane that Bergquist was in over Afghanistan. She recalled the massive search for 6-7 days before searchers discovered the crash site and the remains of Bergquist and the other two crew members. Cause of the crash has not been determined, she said. Asked for a statement about her husband, Pam said the comment from the chaplain who opened and closed the memorial service for Bergquist in Jacksonville speaks for itself. “The chaplain had not known Randy, and the chaplain came up to me after the service and said, ‘I’m so sorry I did not meet the man,’” she said. Pam had been quoted in a Minneapolis Star Tribune story on the loss of her husband as saying, “You just broke the mold on him.” Randy Bergquist would have turned 54 on Oct. 20 and had planned to be home the day after for a leave. Pam said she hadn’t worried about his safety since his aircraft was flown at high altitudes. Her biggest worry about his safety, she said was anytime he was on the ground walking outside his base in Afghanistan. Comments (0)
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