By Paula Wethington / paula@monroenews.com
One week ago today, a pancake breakfast was taking place at Fremont Progress Airport in Fremont, Ohio; which is about an hour away from Monroe, Mich. Airport owner Gene Damschroder was giving airplane rides during the pancake breakfast. The plane crashed on one of those flights, killing him and five passengers.
There was a photo and AP story in Monday’s edition of The Monroe Evening News about the wreck. Many of you also got the headlines from Toledo, Ohio, media that day and during the week. I’ve been told it hit the national wires within hours that day.
Here’s a detail that I only recently caught – plane crash victim Matt Clearman, who recently lived in Maumee, Ohio, was previously from Livonia, Mich., and has been buried in Redford Township. See story in The News-Messenger, Fremont, Ohio.
Some of you know that I grew up in Fremont and worked at The News-Messenger and its sister paper, the News Herald in Port Clinton, Ohio, before arriving at The Monroe Evening News.
That being said, I didn’t have any personal stories to tell about Gene and the other plane victims. I knew many people who had worked with Gene or met him over the years, but had no personal stories to the discussion when the accident got news attention locally. Besides, stormy weather and lengthy power outages quickly became the news of the week here in Michigan.
But I spent the day in Fremont yesterday visiting family. The exit to get off the bypass to my parents’ home is right by the airport.
And here are some tidbits I can share:
- My parents live close enough to the airport that they do hear the planes buzzing in and out. Somehow, the crash itself didn’t get their attention – they learned about it on Toledo TV. When my mother had a chance to go look for the crash site, she realized it was only two blocks of her home. It was one of the few open spaces where Gene could have tried to land a plane in distress, and my mom’s theory is, that as an experienced pilot, that’s where he was aiming.
- My mother hosted a garage sale yesterday and I helped her staff the sale. One of the customers started talking to us about the disaster because of how close we were to the crash site. The man told us his family had attended the pancake breakfast. He had sent his children up on Gene’s plane for rides, and they were the flight just before the fatal crash. “Fifteen more minutes, and I’d be burying a child myself,” he said.
- A Facebook group has been created in memory of the Fremont plane crash victims.
- And if you’re interested in following the stories about the plane crash, the reader forums and photos, do check out what The News-Messenger has posted on its web site. It’s a Monday-Saturday newspaper, with a newsroom staff much smaller than we have at The Monroe Evening News. While the N-M had a definite disadvantage on Sunday afternoon competing with the Toledo media for initial coverage, the staff has more than made up for its initial limitations by staying on the story all week. For example, my former boss, now retired N-M editor Roy Wilhelm, wrote about how Gene always had something to say about planes in the news, and what it was like to cover another fatal crash years ago at the airport.
