A story about the passage of 37 years since a sudden, life-shattering tragedy hit San Diego came up in my Delmarva Newsfeed yesterday.
On Friday, September 25, 1978, a beautiful, sunny southern California Day, Pacific Southwest Airlines (PSA) Fight 182 was on final descent into the airport when it collided with a Cessna. Thirteen seconds later, the Boeing 727 smashed into the ground.
In those unimaginable few seconds, 144 people perished in the widely observed incident that morning at the end of the workweek. So many lives (family members, the community, and the first responders) were shattered at that moment.
A moving FB memorial page and an article from the aviation news site, NYCAviation reminded me of a similar experience in Cecil County with the “flight 214 Remembrance Program.” On December 8, 2013, family members. the community and first responders paused to mark the passage of 50 years since the Pan American World Airways crashed at the edge of Elkton.
The purpose of our program was to honor the memory of those who died when the big plane exploded in flight and went down in a cornfield. It also honored the emergency personnel answering the alarm as periodic flashes of lighting illuminated a scene that would live with those firefighters and police officers throughout their lives. As that day in 2013 marked the passage of a half-century, we invited those affected to come together to honor the memory of those who perished and the generation of emergency personnel who answered the call.
The experiences of the two communities, Elkton and San Diego, were similar in that unimaginable disasters struck, altering the lives of so many people. For the Elkton community, no one living here would forget the sudden explosion in the sky on a stormy Sunday night in Cecil County as a thunderstorm swept through the area. For the firefighters and police officers, It was something they, too, would never forget as they desperately searched for survivors in the cornfield. One firefighter from the North East Volunteer Fire company, Steward W. Godwin, fell in the line of duty that night—while combing the debris field, he suddenly collapsed and died.
In San Diego, the PSA Flight 182 Memorial Committee is working to have a maker placed at the crash site. As the group noted, “PSA 182 is a major part of San Diego’s History. The memory of that day is still vivid in the minds of many San Diegans and continued to affect them as well as many of the first responders who were on duty . . . Our hope is to create a memorial that will honor the victims, their families, the neighborhood, and the law enforcement and emergency workers that still live with the memories of what they saw that day. The memorial will be a place of peace and reflection that can be visited . . . .”
Late last night, I looked over the committee’s FB page as they get ready to gather on the 37th anniversary of the incident this Friday, September 25, at 9:02 a.m. in San Diego. For those in Elkton who answered the call and for the family members on the Maryland crash, this is something we relate to as you read the posts, remarks, and comments. It was a moving experience reading the page, and I hope to read soon that they have the support of the City and can place a memorial on the crash site.
In Elkton, Mayor Joe Fisonia, several years before he was elected to public office, had a memorial placed on the site here. At the time, he was the president of the homeowners association in the area, and he is also a first responder with the Singerly Fire Company.
A sudden, horrible tragedy of this scope is part of a community’s history, as the San Diego committee noted. It is a part of Elkton’s history too.