My father was an airline pilot. He was an Iowa farmboy who became interested in aviation and became his lifetime vocation. He bcame an airline pilot for Southern Airways out of Memphis. He started there in 1960. I wasn’t born yet. I wasn’t born until 1967 when he became Captain.
My father was a co-pilot flying a DC-3 in the same storm that downed the plane of Patsy Cline. They made it through the storm obviously but it scared the hell out of him and his captain. I asked my father about it and said the plane was lifted 6,000 feet in a matter of a minute, with the Captain calling for all power chopped off. The aircraft lifted high above and then everything was Ok. My father has built airplanes, collected aircraft and knows what to do in the sky. He was scared that night. He would bring up that night to tell me to never do anything I don’t want to do. He said that wishing that the poor pilot of the Patsy flight would of stayed grounded until this violent, yet brief storm passed.
They were flying from Memphis to Tupelo, Mississippi. March 5th, 1963. I was born 4 years and 8 days after this flight.
The Dc-3 holds about 50 people. How many people are alive today in 2010 because of that Captain and my father’s flying abilities? I would think over a hundred who are born who would not have been if the plane crashed, killing everyone.
An interesting side note in my family history.