Crash Near To Me

81-year-old walks away from crash

By: BEN BENTON Staff Writer
Source: The Daily Post-Athenian
11-09-2004

A Kingston man might agree with the saying among pilots that any landing you walk away from is a good one.

Around 1:30 p.m. Friday, McMinn County emergency personnel scrambled to the area of County Road 67, where local residents said a small, single-engine airplane went down in a hilly field.

Nearby resident Josh Guthrie said he was the first to reach the man, identified by authorities as 81-year-old John K. Franzreb of Kingston.

“When I got down there he was hanging upside down,” said Guthrie, who noted the pilot seemed calm and relatively uninjured.

...

“I asked him if he wanted us to call an ambulance and he said, no, that he was all right. I said, ‘I’m going to call them anyway,’ and he said, ‘Well, OK. But don’t call my wife,’” Guthrie laughed.

...

At the scene, it appeared that the pilot might have successfully landed the little canvas-covered aircraft had it not been for a barbed wire fence stretching across the field where he attempted his landing.

From the marks visible, it appeared the man got the plane on the ground and slowed down considerably before hitting the fence which folded the plane’s wings and turned it upside down.

...

Another nearby resident, Bill Woody, also talked with the pilot and had seen the plane circling with apparent problems.

“He was flying around my house next to the nursery,” Woody said. “He was going real slow and his engine kept cutting out and then it died on him.”

This is right out near my house and I didn't even know about it until I happened to see this story on the front page of the paper on the way out from work.

Gives me something to think about every time I hear one of those small planes buzzing by overhead (which is alot more often than you might think).