Union Democrat, January 17, 2014, Sierra Views: Jerry Snyder
A Storied Career, by Mike Morris
South Pole, Rim Fire, 9/11 among job highlights
Jerry Snyder says his career has been crisis management from the start.
During nearly three decades with the U.S. Coast Guard, he rescued stranded boats, assisted with a oil spill in the San Francisco Bay and helped coordinate the return of a whale named J.J. to the Pacific Ocean.
Snyder followed that with a job for the Federal Aviation Administration announcing to the world that all aircraft were grounded following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
The stress of that job brought him to the Stanislaus National Forest, where he served as the forest’s main spokesman for the past 11 years.
Snyder, 60, retired from the Forest Service a week ago – not before last year’s massive Rim Fire, the Sierra Nevada’s largest wildfire on record. ”I’ve never spent a day in the hospital, never had any broken bones,” he said. “I consider myself quite blessed considering all the dangerous things I’ve done in my career.”
Indeed, Snyder said he‘s lucky juts to be born. His mother, born in 1928 with smallpox, was blind in one eye and deaf in one ear.
“She weighed only 2 pounds, and her crib was a shoebox, he said.
During the Vietnam War, Snyder took a high school job repairing emergency survival equipment at Travis Air Force Base in Fairfield.
In 1972, he dropped out of high school and joined the Coast Guard.
Based in New York, he was a seaman who performed search and rescue operations, mostly rescuing fishing boars stuck in the northern Atlantic Ocean.
Three years later, her went back to school to get his high school diploma and then worked as an emergency medical technician on a helicopter crew based in Brooklyn.
Eventually, Snyder became the Coast Guard’s chief photographer. His assignments took him from former president Ronald Reagan’s second inauguration in 1985 to documenting scientific research in Antarctica a few years later.
While stationed in Miami in 1988, Snyder took a part-time job photographing the Miami Dolphins football team.
In 1990, he became a public affairs officer for the Coast Guard and was part of the National Strike Force, which responds to hazardous chemical and oil spills. During this time, he was stationed in Washington, D.C., and North Carolina.
Snyder was later stationed in Alameda, working as a public affairs officer during the Cape Mohican Oil Spill which dumped thousands of gallons of oil into the San Francisco Bay in 1996.
He then moved to Los Angeles, where he finished his Coast Guard Career as a public affairs officer. During that time, her was approached by the director of Sea World in San Diego to see if the Coast Guard would help release a rehabilitated orphaned gray whale named J.J. back into the Pacific Ocean.
Found on the beach in Santa Monica, J.J. weighed 20,000 pounds when she was returned to the ocean.
“We were able to get J.J. safe and sound into the water,” he said.
During his 28-year career with the Coast Guard, Snyder was sent on 178 temporary assignments ranging from a few days to several months.
Snyder then worked a two-year stint as a spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration during the terrorist attacks of 9/11.
He was the FAA spokesman during a news conference at Los Angeles International Airport, telling the world that all U.S. airports were closed.
A news clip of that announcement was later used in the documentary “Fahrenheit 9/11,” billed as “one of the most controversial and provocative films” of 2004.
“The movie had some truths and fallacies,” he said. “What I mean by that is where they used my clip was true, but other things in the film were dubious.”
Snyder said he actually watched the Twin Towers being built from the Coast Guard Cutter he was originally stationed on in New York.
The terrorist attacks served as a catalyst for him to leave Southern California and pursue a job with the U.S. Forest Service, Snyder said.
“After 09/11 and the FAA, I was pretty stressed out,” he recalled. “I was looking for something where I could enjoy my work and get back outdoors.”
Snyder started in January 2003 as the spokesman for the Stanislaus National Forest.
“There are a lot of similarities between my work for the Forest Service and the Coast Guard,” he said. “Both are government organizations that manage environmental, recreation and law enforcement within a specific geographical area.”
Highlights of his time at the Stanislaus National Forest, he said included the U.S. Forest Service centennial celebration in 2005 and the forest supplying the U.S. Capitol Christmas Tree in 2011.
Other favorite Forest Service assignments include documenting the National Boy Scout Jamboree in 2010 and helping take supplies to California Conservation Corps trail crews.
Snyder said his time with the forest also included not so fun stuff, such as 2013’s massive Rime Fire, which burned 257,000 acres last year in the Stanislaus National Forest and Yosemite National Park.
“There are a lot of tense situations during a fire response,” he said.
Snyder lived in Tuolumne County longer than anywhere else I his life.
His Rancho Poquitos home is decorated with model ships, a Smokey Bear puppet and a wooden diorama he bade depicting a Louisiana fishing town using driftwood he collected on his Coast Guard assignments.
Snyder said he would like to create diorama and take photographs now that he’s retired and will have more time to pursue his artistic hobbies.