A Little History
And so, the life of Dan Deuel
Dan grew up in southern California where early on he developed a kinship with wildlife, especially birds. One weekend, while water skiing with his family on the Colorado River, he found an injured Green-winged Teal Duck. It had been shot, and left to die. Dan took the bird home and nursed it back to health. During his teenage years his affinity for birds was more and more apparent. 
Following high school graduation, Dan attended Pierce College in Woodland Hills, California where he roomed with his childhood friend Don Crichlow. Officially, Dan’s course of study was “Wildlife Preservation.” He has joked that his true pursuits were cars, girls, beer (in that order), and some studying in his chosen field.
It was Dan’s love of cars and racing, specifically a 1963 silver, split window Corvette, that changed the direction of his life. After a couple terms of back-breaking study, he and Don naively took a semester off from school. The idea was to make some extra cash and “beef up” their cars. Not long after returning to school, the notices came. Don, being a year older, got his invitation to report to his draft board first. Later, when Dan received his invitation, Don, from a hospital bed in Japan, penned Dan some good advice, “...enlist, then you can choose what you want to do.” Dan spent his 21st birthday in boot camp and arrived in the Republic of South Vietnam January of 1968, just in time to celebrate Tet, the traditional Vietnamese new years holiday. He worked for a year as a counterintelligence agent for Uncle Sam while in Vietnam and then taught jungle warfare for a year to replacement CIs at Fort Holabird in Baltimore, and was honorably discharged. Some years later Dan returned 2 Bronze Stars and a Purple Heart, along with a letter of explanation, to The Traveling Wall Vietnam memorial in Eugene. It was Dan’s protest to the United States involvement in Central America. After witnessing the senseless destruction and brutality of war, Dan embraced a personal philosophy of peace.
His military career behind him, Dan moved to Santa Barbara, a beautiful coastal community in Southern California. He had always loved motorcycles, a trait that he picked up from both his mother and his father. On the evening of April 26, 1971, while out riding his bike, Dan came upon a motorist who was having mechanical problems and pulled off the side of the road to help. As he climbed off of his motorcycle a drunk driver swerved off the road and hit Dan, head-on. Dan Deuel, who returned home from Viet Nam decorated and unscathed, was now left partially disabled and in chronic pain.
Dan moved to Bandon, Oregon due in part to the progressive nature of the state’s population. Dan was determined to find a useful place in life where he could be part of the solution and not the problem. Attending an Audubon Society meeting in 1976 the need for a facility like Free Flight to serve the Oregon Coast became clear. Dan set out to provide that service. Free Flight incorporated and thereafter became a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.
It has been over 30 years since the effort to attend to "a few oiled birds" began. Hundreds of different species and thousands of individual animals have passed though Free Flight's doors. Each year brings more animals in need. Free Flight continues to provide that service, and Dan Deuel’s legacy lives on.