Handy Cappin With Zeke

Many people may remember the Chinook helicopter, call signal Extortion 17, that crashed in Afghanistan in August 2011. The Taliban shot it down, killing all 38 people onboard. It was and still is the deadliest day of the Afghan war, and it made international headlines.

Few people outside the military, however, know that just a few weeks before, shortly after midnight on June 25, 2011, another Chinook crashed in Afghanistan. No one died, though Crozier and another soldier, Kirk Kuykendall, were severely injured. The incident barely made a blip in the news.

Because of his brain injury, and because he was knocked unconscious, Crozier doesn’t like talking about the crash. He doesn’t know if what he remembers first-hand is accurate. He worries he’ll get the details wrong. That, in his mind, would be a huge disservice to his fellow soldiers who carried him to safety.

A photo in Crozier’s den shows him posing with pilots Buddy Lee and Bryan Nichols and two other crew members shortly before boarding the Chinook for that fateful mission. They’d never posed for a picture together before, Crozier says, so he’s not sure why they did on that particular night. He’s just thankful they did. They’d all grown close, like brothers.

Author Ed Darack has devoted a chapter of “The Final Mission of Extortion 17,” due out in September, to the crash Crozier survived.

About three years ago, Zeke started making personalized artwork from bottle caps to give as gifts to repay people for their help. He begins each project by painting a design on a wood surface, then bending and gluing different colored bottle caps to those designs, before covering it all with a high-gloss resin. Soon people began asking if they could buy pieces from him, and Handy-Cappin blossomed. He has hundreds, maybe thousands, of caps sorted by color in the new workshop “Military Makeover” created for him in his basement. Bartenders at Johnny’s Tavern in Overland Park Kansas save the caps for him, and people from around the country send them to him after a video clip from a Channel 9 feature on Crozier went viral on the internet.

In November of 2017 BDSI and AVMAC teamed up to send Zeke 700 pounds of bottle caps. All I did was tell my Brother Don, Zeke’s story and he was in. It didn’t matter that AVMAC was primarily Navy aviation. The team at AVMAC was ready and willing to pay to send 700 pounds of bottle caps to Zeke to help a hero that put his life on the line for our country.

AVMAC (http://avmacllc.com) is an aviation maintenance company headquartered in Chesapeake, Virginia. Their moto is: “Integrating tomorrow’s aircraft… today!” AVMAC was founded by two former Naval Aviation Maintenance Officers, Bert Ortiz and Don Buzard, who collectively have more than six decades of experience assigned to, or directly supporting, both carrier and amphibious aviation. They were joined by Ron Stebbins who has a similar resume also serving over 30 years as a Naval Aviation Maintenance Officer. AVMAC’s corporate staff and leadership team all enjoy similar backgrounds and experience which make it a highly knowledgeable force multiplier to their customer base. The company prides itself on hiring, recruiting and training veterans as it continues to serve the Department of Defense, Homeland Security and commercial customers.