If this isn’t a heartbreaking story, about a tight group of friends that was decimated trying to help someone in their circle, then I don’t know what is.
On Friday a propeller plane crashed into Lake Michigan, killing four of its occupants, all pals on a medical mission to help one of their friends, who had cancer.
In a poignant final gesture one of the victims, a doctor, had enough time before the Cessna 206 actually hit the water to pen a goodbye note to all of the group’s family and friends, according to press accounts posted by AOL.
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The physician who left the farewell note was Dr. James Hall of Alma, Mich., a town north of Detroit where all five people aboard the plane lived and were friends. Dr. Hall was accompanying a cancer patient, his patient, to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.
But the plane started having engine problems while it was flying over the lake. It crashed, and the pilot, Jerry Freed, was fished out of the water alive by an Illinoise couple that was on vacation on their fishing board. But the Coast Guard hadn’t recovered the bodies of the plane’s other occupants, according to AOL.
But the Coast Guard did find Hall’s medical bag, with his farewell note in it.
Here are its contents:
“Dear All, We love you. We lost power over the middle (of) Lake Michigan and turning back. We are praying to God that all (will) be taken care of. We love you. Jim.”
Hall’s widow Ann supplied the letter to a local newspaper on Saturday, to comfort the survivors of the group.
The five friends aboard the plane were helping each other out. Alma Public Schools Superintendant Don Pavlik was taking his wife Irene, who had esophageal cancer, to the Mayo Clinic to be treated, The Detroit Free Press reported.
Pilot Freed, who owned the Cessna, offered to fly the Pavliks to the hospital. Hall, the Pavliks’ family physician, came along, as did another pilot friend of the couple, Earl Davidson, according to the Free Press.
The Cessna took off from Gratiot Community Airport near Alma roughly 9 a.m. Friday, and an hour later Freed radioed air traffic control and said the plane was having electrical problems.
Not long after that, the plane crashed into Lake Michigan about a half dozen miles from Ludington.
The town of Alma is reportedly reeling from the loss of its loved ones. But Hall’s widow had stressed that his final letter was written on behalf of all of the doomed plane victims to their family and friends, so hopefully Alma will take comfort in its contents.
