It was the 1970s, when CB-radios were hot and most people had never heard of a cell phone. Patrick McPherson, a Salvation Army officer and pastor, had been transferred from Illinois to Michigan, and he wanted to keep in touch with his brother in Missouri. So he decided, instead of racking up high telephone bills, to buy a CB radio.
Pat soon bought a much more powerful ham radio, which he set up in his house. Little did he know that his love for radio would grow so much that it would one day birth a worldwide network of volunteer ham operators called The Salvation Army Team Emergency Radio Network, or SATERN.
Even today, in the cell-phone and computer age, ham radios remain vital; in an emergency, sometimes they are the only form of communication that remains up and running.
Katrina connections
That was the case when Hurricane Katrina hit last fall. With most cell towers down and electricity out, SATERN went to work, handling 58,000 "health and welfare" requests from people who hoped to find loved ones. Until then, the most requests the network had ever handled at a time was 1,000; SATERN received 3,000 requests in just the first two weeks after the hurricane.
"You had a huge area that was devastated," Pat explains. "No one could get hold of their loved ones. We found 25,000 people.... We participated in literally scores, hundreds of rescues. It was absolutely mind-boggling."
Pat is particularly proud of SATERN's efforts to help a U.S. soldier in Iraq who had lost contact with his family during Katrina. SATERN operators made radio contact with a mobile radio unit in the Gulf Region that searched for information. The soldier's mother was eventually found in a Mississippi shelter, and SATERN arranged for her to talk to her son and tell him that his family was safe.
Pat says he also received 1,000 requests to join SATERN from radio operators who heard the back-and-forth during Katrina.
"I get applications virtually every day," he says. "People from all over the world want to be a part of it. Since Hurricane Mitch in 1998, not one week has gone by without someone joining. People come to you who just want to help. It's happened so much that I'm not surprised. Here's God making it work again."
Drills and God's help
Pat cites both down-to-earth and supernatural reasons for SATERN's growth and success.
"We run practice nets every day," Pat says. "SATERN is the most consistent [at] disaster preparation because we're working every day at it."
But he says there is another important ingredient that makes the network so effective.
"I view what has happened with SATERN as the moving of the Holy Spirit," says McPherson, now the network's national director and still pastor of a local Salvation Army church in Midland, Mich. "To see the things that have dynamically happened over the last 18 years ... is just a tremendous thing. I know Pat McPherson as a man could not do what was necessary to make this thing work. It's exploded."
Back when Pat began as an amateur radio operator, he says he would often hear different agencies and networks communicating with one another. That gave him an idea that would provide his own organization, The Salvation Army, with a way to help people in times of disaster.
While pastoring a Salvation Army church in Springfield, Ill., Pat and another ham operator, Art Evans, started SATERN in 1988 with just a handful of men on the local disaster team. At first the network was used only for communications between vehicles and headquarters during local disasters such as fires.
Then the network mushroomed. "The program kind of exploded in our division [geographical area of Salvation Army ministry]," Pat recalls. "Everyone who wasn't helping was listening on the radio. They were very impressed with the Salvation Army operation and what we were doing."
Pat later became disaster coordinator for the Army's USA Central Territory, based in Chicago, where he was able to take SATERN to new heights.
SATERN now has 3,000 volunteer members and is well respected among the close-knit radio and disaster community, Pat says. During the Katrina crisis, the state of Louisiana was contacting Pat in the Midwest for information about what was happening in the hurricane zone.
The 'it' group
"The stature of SATERN is tremendous," he says. "This has raised the profile of The Salvation Army and emergency services. Everyone just regards us very highly. It's just like we are 'it.' We are the emergency entity that kind of helps in the collaboration and networking at all of these events."
Pat, who is now stationed in Midland, Mich., says that anyone with an amateur radio license may join SATERN.
"You have the entire spectrum of humanity," he says. "You have people who are perhaps on welfare, retirees, custodians, schoolteachers, 747 pilots, mayors, chiefs of police, doctors, university professors."
All these people are drawn together by skill and what Pat calls "altruistic motivation." "Here's an opportunity to use skills and equipment they've accrued," he says. "It makes them feel good to help other people."
Because of SATERN's focus on helping, the network draws many Christian radio operators who see their ham radio work as ministry.
Pat mentions people like Warren Andreasen, who is retired after 19 years as information technology director for the Salvation Army's Southwest Division. Out of his home in Mesa, Ariz., Warren helped set up the national SATERN list server and now manages the servers that handle health and welfare traffic.
The son of Salvation Army officers, the former design engineer was raised with a sense of service and says God equipped him with all the skills he would need.
"I believe a lot in the Lord's leading and equipping," Warren says. "I had a background in computers and radio and the Sal-vation Army. I had the understanding and the vision. I didn't feel it was an accident and that I had to put it to use. I knew how much the Salvation Army could benefit."
Giving hope
Richard Montgomery, a chemist and pharmaceutical consultant, saw the benefit of SATERN firsthand. He was on his radio during an earthquake in Turkey in 1998 when he heard Salvation Army officials saying they wished they had contacts there for health and welfare requests. Richard got on the radio and put them in contact with someone he knew there.
Richard, who lives in Bedminister, N.J., has been a SATERN member ever since. Today he is the organization's coordinator in the Army's USA Eastern Territory.
When asked what motivates him, he quotes the tenets for amateur radio as outlined in the Code of Federal Regulations.
"The very first reason for our existence is to provide an emergency service for people in need," he says. "That's [also] the first tenet of all spiritual organizations—to provide for the needs of other people. When you have people who aren't hearing from loved ones, I'm happy I have the wherewithal to provide them with a glimmer of hope that everything is going to be OK. We do that individually, but it's also great to work with a great organization like the Salvation Army."
Richard, who was involved in U.S. Navy communications while stationed in Germany during the Vietnam War years, loves it when he can help family members find one another.
"It's the absolute greatest feeling in the world," he says. "It really makes it all worthwhile."
'Touchdown' joy
Leon Chaney agrees. He's a Texas National Guardsman and former U.S. Marshal who developed a team of ham operators in Texas to help following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
"It's like getting a touchdown," he says of the feeling he gets when the network puts people back in touch with one another. His group received 26,000 health and welfare requests and found 17,000 people.
Leon says his team helped rescue a 90-year-old man who had climbed into his attic to call for help and escape rising waters. His cell phone had gone dead after a few calls, but from that sketchy information, SATERN radio operators ascertained his location and contacted the state police, who sent a boat to rescue the man.
"Our people were motivated," he says. "We didn't shut that radio down for about 45 days."
Leon, who lives in Waco, Texas, says the model of Jesus Christ drives him.
"That's the motivating factor," he says. "Ham operators are funny people. They like to help."
That's what drew Al Shaver, a former 747 pilot, and his wife, Ann, to SATERN. They both have doctorates in social services administration. Ann says Salvation Army Founder William Booth would be proud of the way SATERN helps everyone. Part of the Army's stated mission is to help others in the name of Jesus "without discrimination."
"SATERN attracted me because it really helps people where they are and regardless of who they are," she says.
Not only disasters
The couple has homes in Hawaii and Florida, where they volunteer to write the SATERN newsletter, The SATERN Ring. "This was a chance to actually 'do something,' so it was very appealing," Al says.
SATERN depends on people like the Shavers and Harry Gilling, a retired communications director from United Airlines. He donated the www.satern.org website and has maintained it for the last 10 years from Arlington Heights, Ill.
"I just wanted to serve and help others," he says. "This is one way I can do it. It's very rewarding that the system works."
Pat "recruited" Harry several years ago when he passed his car on a Michigan highway and noticed a radio antenna. He pulled up alongside and motioned for Harry to get on his radio. The two became fast friends.
While SATERN is most closely associated with disasters, English teacher Peggy McNary of Indianapolis, Ind., has found another use for the network. As SATERN's Indiana coordinator, she employs it for the Salvation Army's annual Coats for Kids drive.
SATERN provides communications for the collection of coats at the RCA Dome during Indianapolis Colts games and also for distribution day, when thousands of families come to the state fairgrounds to pick out coats.
McNary says her spiritual life has "everything" to do with her SATERN involvement.
"I believe Christ charges us to take care of 'the least of these, [our] brethren' because doing so serves Him," Peggy says. "As I am blessed, so I try to give back to the victims of disaster, in the hope that there will be someone there to help me, should I become a victim, too. It's a type of 'pass-it-on' mentality."
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