Born in Seymour, Conn. on May 8, 1929, to Julius and Mary Kaslo Ulrich. He was a devoted husband of sixty-two years to his first wife Martha (nee Regan) and beloved husband of his second wife Sue Johnson.Charlie was a loving son to the late Junius and Rachel Johnson, much loved father of the late Tracy Johnson and dear brother to the late Jeane Johnson Stanfield. Memorial unveiled paying homage to 101 victims who perished on Eastern Flight 401. Back to the clubhouse and armed with the airspace restrictions, I was ready to fly. The bronze plaques are being donated as well as the granite base. Some believethat Eastern Air Lines cannibalized and reused pieces of the wreckage in other airliners. A fireball rushed through the fuselage, and the plane began pinwheeling like a giant Ferris wheel spun loose from its mount. Judy Ellenberg 2/27/53 Accura Media Group LLC, 30 Dec. 2013. One gave him money. She left Eastern and worked in the travel agency industry. This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the title Flight 401. Patricia A. Ghyssels 3/31/45 Anne Ponte 1/7/16 Anniversary message - George Gaudiello December 29, 2021, 11:22 am. Surely, pilots and air crew would never make up such stories, would they? Why dont we sing to help warm ourselves up? she suggested. If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article. This is a story about how a burnt out light bulb led to a major aviation disaster. (Deer in south Florida are almost anemic compared to deer in other parts of the country.) Edward moved to Scarborough, Maine to expand Winchesters presence in Northern New England and the Maritime provinces. Barbara Ann Saal. They go deep into the heart of the Florida Everglades to contact the victims' ghosts and find out what really happened that fateful night in 1972. Definition: Here is something interesting that we discovered during our research. Loft told Stockstill to put the plane on autopilot while Repo went below to the avionics bay (called the "hell hole") to manually check the landing gear. Isell Delgado 1/23/25 By. The pair conversed briefly before Loft faded from sight. Bud helped the man into the airboat and poured him coffee from the thermos. Raposa was struggling for ideas to keep her group occupied. Photography courtesy Ron Infantino, A few minutes later Leonhards radio crackled. As I sit writing this 34 years later in December 2006, I can still visualize the events of that night just as if they had occurred yesterday. Elizabeth M. Pollack 12/10/17 Instead, he would witness the first jumbo jet crash in U.S. history. Bud waved the helicopter toward a nearby levee. He returned to Connecticut with his wife and infant son where he gained employment with Winchester Arms Company in New Haven, Conn. His career at Winchester included various fields of the sporting arms industry. Follow my voice!. That was a miracle that is probably attributable to three factors: (1) the crash site was a soft, wet swamp; (2) there was no significant post-crash fire; and (3) the force of disintegration was directed horizontally and not vertically, flinging many survivors out into the swamp instead of subjecting them to fatal blunt force trauma which is characteristic of most airplane crashes. After dark he moonlighted as a commercial frogger. He has never taken pleasure in talking about what he saw after Eastern Air Lines Flight 401 went down and how he felt about it. Perhaps Fuller read it, and was inspired to concoct the rest of the story. During a rare moment of calm after the rescue helicopter had departed for Miami, he heard the faint tune of a Christmas carol. ", PHOTO of Mercy Ruiz and her Samsonite suitcase in May 2009. In recent months Canti and others have made pilgrimages to Bud's screened door to hear his story. Johnson, Charles | A trio of newly minted Rolls-Royce turbofan jet engines made a rumble that could barely be heard by the 163 passengers and 13 crew members seated inside the spacious cabin and reconfigured cockpit. Skeptoid Podcast This Australian pine rising from the Old Seven Mile Bridge symbolizes the resilience of the Florida Derek Trucks and Susan Tedeschi give a kaleidoscopic close to their U.S. tour at this historic venueplus, an now = new Date Below: Christina Casada-Acorn, now 35, standing at the crash site in 2007 while holding the dress she was wearing the night of the crash. All three of Loft, Stockstill, and Repo were among the unlucky majority who perished. Dennis Gordon 12/9/32 I wouldnt be a bit surprised if the speed hed been traveling was well over a hundred miles an hour., Leonhard added, The guy weighed around 160, but it still took eight of us carrying a stretcher filled with his dead weight to carry him out. Eastern Flight 401. A light on the instrument panel the first officer was monitoring failed to illuminate green to confirm that the nose landing gear was extended and locked. Loft abandoned the landing and informed Air Traffic Control of the issue. Adapted from Bad Guys, Bullets, and Boat Chases by Bob H. Lee. Carpet layers need strong backs. Air crews reported seeing apparitions of their dead coworkers on board the planes that had Flight 401's spare parts. People observe a candlelight vigil in memory of victims of a plane crash in Kathmandu, Nepal, Monday, Jan. 16, 2023. Ronald Jaye March 27, 1940 "You have to keep your eye on the frogs real good when that airboat is moving - I mean not take your eyes away - and be quick with the gig," he says, in what amounts to the Gettysburg Address for him. As in other reports, the flight attendant selected Repos photo from a choice offered to her. Flight 401 was a short-haul flight to Miami. Ghosts of Flight 401 - 6 | His right arm was badly hurt. He usually wrote UFO books, and was best known for The Interrupted Journey about the Betty and Barney Hill case. Trudy Smith didn't return to flying. Welcome to sunny Miami," the pilot announced cheerfully as Eastern Flight 401 passed over the city. No thanks The unintentional jar apparently caused the planes nose to tilt down a few degrees. By 1 a.m., the rookie warden had launched his airboat. With determination born of her Portuguese grandparents work ethic and her work on a 160-acre dairy farm as a young girl growing up in Rhode Island, the former Girl Scout troop leader shouted, Im a stewardess. Obviously, he was home trying to get some rest at noon on Saturday, but he eventually came out to the clubhouse late in the afternoon or early evening. For a minute I thought [Don] Repo's ghost was on the plane.". The Sun Flying Club wasn't really a "flying" club. However, we had one advantage that members of the general public didn't have - we had access to airplanes. Renee Joaquin Albert 8/3/36 One curious aspect of these sightings is that people always saw one or the other. I'm pretty sure that Tom Roche and Bob Crews were two of the "lucky" ones that got aboard, but I couldn't swear to it now. Fortunately, Bud was an expert. About Flight 401 | Ever the good Catholic, she crossed herself in the dark and silently prayed, Oh God, please let that be true.. According to the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), the main fuselage broke into four main sections and many other smaller pieces on impact. 2023 Skeptoid Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Raposas survivors became upset. "I still love to fly; I get on planes and fall asleep like a baby," jokes Raposa. By about 3:15 a.m., Raposas flock of survivors had all been rescued. This show is made possible by financial support from listeners like you. Please review this photograph closely. Eventually, the investigations were concluded and most, but not all, of the wreckage was removed or salvaged from the Everglades. Almost 40 years ago, Eastern Airlines flight 401 crashed. Some may have tried to turn this actual human tragedy into a fictional ghost story, but it was the efforts of the real people involved who used it to extinguish a few real ghosts in the form of safety flaws, to reduce the chances of the same type of accident happening again. In every direction, there was nothing but dead silence and incredible darkness. Abover right - Over 100 airboats participated in the evenet. The aircraft, a Lockheed L-1011-1 Tristar jet, seemed to have an issue with the front nose gear. As I recall that December night, it was a relatively cool evening for south Florida with a moonless night sky. A friend once warned him: "One day you'll work a plane crash out there." Flight 401 Survivors, Years After the Crash and Memorial Efforts. Allen M. Stark 8/11/49 When I was learning to fly in the mid-1960s at Sun Line Helicopters, one of the fixed base operators (FBO) tied into the Miami-Dade Junior College aviation program at the Opa locka Airport, I worked as a line boy refueling aircraft and doing minor line maintenance. It's time to change that, say survivors and families of the victims, who hope to raise $15,000 for a granite block containing the names of those who died. One day, late in 1973, I got a phone call from James telling me to come over to his house; he had something for me. Incredibly, we found a man sitting alone on a small tussock. "You didn't have nothing to worry about," he'd tell her, finding a seat on the porch, from where he could hear the barred owls and their singular "who-cooks-for-you" calls, exciting and mournful at once. Photos: AL DIAZ | MIAMI HERALD. The original witness so was distressed that several of the cabin crew had to forcibly restrain her. 21 Mar 2017. Loose chunks of lime rock cracked and popped under the tires as he crawled ahead. Nery Palma 7/12/34 He saw mangled bodies and heard the pitiful moans of the dying. * Glenn C. Remkus, 47, was still hospitalized in Miami with burns and two broken legs as of February 1973, though a newspaper report on Dec 31st had reported him to be in "satisfactory" condition and in "good spirits." A yellow flash. Reports began to take on much more sinister overtone, at least in the eyes of the witness involved. A scene from the TV movie "The Crash of Flight 401" (1978), Eastern Airlines Flight 401: The Ghosts of Memories Past. The most accurate account of the crash of Flight 401 was authored by a journalist from the Miami Herald, Rob Elder. New York: Dial Press, 1980. He cranked up the engine and moved toward the sound. (Ron Infantino) On the 29th of December 1972, an Eastern Air Lines Lockheed L-1011 Tristar landing in Miami, Florida plowed into the Everglades well short of the airport, throwing dozens of survivors into a grisly fight for survival. A mass of interesting testimony was produced as a result. Ghosts of Flight 401. This was only about 12 hours after the L1011 crashed! You don't want to be in the water with me.". I mean, I was a single person with no family. Below Right - Gatherers take a moment to honor Robert 'Bud' Marquis. Imagine his surprise when he came face to face with Don Repo. For many years she was a strong advocate for crew and passenger safety in the airline industry speaking to Local and international groups in the U.S. and around the world. The signal inside the cockpit had not illuminated as it should have. . NOTE - There is no official death certificates for "Mrs. McAvoy," which appeared in passenger lists released to the press at the time. Dr. Aftabuddin Chowdhury 1/1/43 Steve Shippy and Cindy Kaza team up to uncover the horrifying truth about the crash of Eastern Flight 401. Read the accident report (PDF). Nobody, not the pilots nor passengers, knew anything was amiss. It is now known that "Mrs. McAvoy" was Donna Smith, Thomas McAvoy's traveling companion. Late in the evening of Friday, December 29, 1972, I was at the old Sun Flying Club tie-down area located on the east side of Opa locka Airport in metropolitan Miami, Florida. Crash of Eastern Airlines Flight 401. Jose Garcia 6/4/47 In addition to commemorating Flight 401, the creative talent behind the exhibit is seeking to help survivors raise the funding needed to create a permanent large-scale memorial to Flight 401's victims and survivors in the City of Miami Springs, once home to a thriving Eastern Air Lines community. Robert L. Marquis - "Bud" to friends - wanted to eat frogs' legs. Leonhard put the car in park, cut the motor and stepped out. Burning jet fuel engulfed the aircraft as it plowed through the swamp. He died in Milford Hospital, Milford CT, in September 1973, though its difficult to know if it was as a result of his crash injuries. In the end, it appears that the source of the stories was an article in an issue of the Flight Safety Foundation. at Highland Cemetery in Deport, Texas. Richard Childs 5/21/52 Folks from South Florida's sporting community, mostly hunters, fishers and airboaters, heard, many for the first time, about Bud. The only thing she was looking forward to on arrival in Miami was going to bed. Not a single usable part was salvaged from the wreckage, and not a single component that crashed with Flight 401 was ever installed in another aircraft. Ernest F. Bloodgood 4/1/16 Bill Elliott, a sergeant with the Metropolitan Dade County Public Safety Department (the successor to the old county sheriffs department), and I had been sitting around most of the evening with other club members talking airplane stuff and we ended up being the last two members to leave the clubhouse. As other reviewers note, this is the nonfiction story of Eastern Flight 401, which crashed in the Everglades back in 1972. Unborn son of Rochelle and Stefan Rubin Web. The explanation soon became clear: the apparitions were always on aircraft that contained equipment salvaged from Flight 401. It's truly amazing how the mind works for, at the time, I had no idea of the significance of what I saw that night nor did I intend to store it away in my memory banks. I thought I was going to have a nervous breakdown. Rose Kashman 9/22/15 It turned out to be anything other than a routine Saturday! 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