LOW ARMY HELICOPTER PILOTS
ZED GOLF CART
actions saved the lives of the unsuspecting mine-
sweeping team.
“They would have been slaughtered,” he said.
“They were not prepared. They were marching
along like they were on a picnic.”
As it turned out,
Shawn added, the
minesweeping
team was able to
react and take out
the enemy ambush
squad.
“We didn’t lose a
single person,” he
said. “So it was a
blessing for us to
be the target and
not them.”
Shawn also thought
about why he sur-
vived Vietnam and
came home while
many of his fellow
pilots – some he
considered as close
friends – did not.
“I give God the
credit for me being
hawn, a retired Army helicopter
here,” he said. “I
sure his Cobra Gunship golf cart should have been
killed several times.
But I started each
day with a prayer: ‘Lord help me to do what I’ve
been trained to do, and if it gets beyond my ca-
pabilities, it’s in your hands.’”
Shawn thinks about those lost friends and the
many others he served with when he takes his
Cobra cart for a drive around his neighborhood.
And they certainly will be on his mind when the
golf cart makes its official debut in the upcom-
ing St. Patrick’s Day Parade on March 14 at Lake
Sumter Landing.
“I know it’s going to get a lot of attention because
it’s so unique,” he said, adding that he hopes to
be paired with a tank golf cart owned by Vietnam
veteran Gary Gariepy, who served 23 years in the
Air Force and Army.
As for the golf cart itself, Shawn said he plans to
leave everything painted white, as he’s no longer
in the military and it represents a civilian helicop-
ter. But he said he hopes those who see it will
appreciate the intricate detailing to make it as
realistic as possible, including the rocket pods,
nose turret, the angle of the vertical fin on the
tail boom, the cupola on top beneath the rotor
blades, the pitot tube to tell airspeed, a custom-
ized instrument panel, and five aircraft lights.
“I can use a Bluetooth speaker and I’ve got
machinegun fire and helicopter sounds on my
phone,” he said. “I’ve got it where I’m talking to a
task force commander and he’s talking back and
forth to me. So I’ve got it for realism.”
Shawn, who even has a stuffed German Shep-
herd riding with him in the cockpit for the chil-
dren who see the customized cart, said if the
reaction he has received so far in his own neigh-
borhood is any indication of what’s to come in
parades, his Cobra cart will be a huge success.
“I can go up to Moyer Rec Center less than a mile
away and it will take me two hours to get back
home because of people stopping me,” he said.
“Everybody who stops me wants to get a picture.
I take a lot of pride in the fact that people see
that it is a professional job. It’s interesting, dif-
ferent and there’s not another one like it in The
Villages.”
www.villages-news.com
MARCH 2019
21