Today we were at the New Hope memorial for Southern 242 – Georgia’s largest aviation disaster.

The Southern 242 committee just unveiled their upcoming memorial sculpture.

Around the pedestal, the committee says, will be the names of the 72 fatalities and 22 survivors of the 1977 crash.

A terrible storm, bad radar brought on by the storm, a bad forecast, complete systems failure on the plane and human error on the ground led to the crash. The pilots, former military aviators, then steering a glider, desperately attempted the unprecedented: landing a DC9 on a country road. Witnesses on the ground say Capt. William McKenzie and co-pilot Lyman Keele, with 23,000 flight hours between them, put their front wheel on the center line of the two-lane road. But for power poles. The wings hit poles, snapped trees and spun the plane out of control.

When the plane came to rest, emergency workers couldn’t get to the site for the debris. Survivors were carried through that house, into the backyard, through the woods and to a parallel road. Everyone that made it into that house and out the back door survived.

At the memorial, they prayed and sang and rang bells for the dead. Over the years it has turned into a reunion. I wrote about all of this a few years ago.

We had a late lunch here, a nearby north Georgia barbecue joint that had good brisket.

And then in walked this guy:

Isn’t that a great photo?