Five Years Later, Memories of Hendrick Plane Crash Are Still Haunting
Show your support.
Buzz this article up.
Saturday will be five years. If you’re a NASCAR fan, you don’t have to ask what the five years stands for, you know all too well.
It’s a date etched in our minds that we’ll never forget, October 24, 2004.
It was on a foggy, soggy Sunday, somewhere around 1 pm ET that we tragically lost 10 people aboard a Hendrick Motorsports airplane.
The 12-passenger Beech 200 King Air, crashed on final approach to an airport near Martinsville, Va., where its occupants were headed to watch the race at nearby Martinsville Speedway, just seven miles away, that afternoon.
Pilot error is what was determined by the Federal Aviation Administration as the cause of the crash, where the altitude the plane should have been at and where it actually was resulted in it crashing into the side of Bull Mountain.
The crash snuffed out the lives of Rick Hendrick’s son Ricky, Rick’s brother John and John’s two daughters Kimberly and Jennifer (Rick’s nieces), Hendrick Motorsports general manager Jeff Turner, HMS chief engine builder Randy Dorton, DuPont executive Joe Jackson, Scott Lathram (a pilot for Tony Stewart who wanted to say goodbye to the driver before deploying overseas for military service) and the two pilots, Richard Tracy and Elizabeth Morrison.
This will be the first year I haven’t returned to Martinsville for that particular race weekend, not to mention my yearly pilgrimage to the crash sight to once again pay my respects. For some reason, that tragedy struck me deeper than most others ever have, on the par with the tragic death of Dale Earnhardt.
I knew Dorton somewhat, had spoken to Turner once or twice and had interviewed Ricky and John Hendrick a few times over the years.
While I wouldn’t say I was close friends with any of them, the fact I knew them even in passing was enough to have my heart sink and drop when I heard the list of victim’s names upon its release by local authorities.
And had it not been for a last-minute decision by team owner Rick Hendrick to skip the race due to him having a touch of the flu, he would have been the 11th victim, the second time Hendrick has cheated death in his life, the other beating cancer several years earlier.
I can still envision how I learned about the crash as if it was yesterday. The race was about one-third of the way through when a public relations staffer for Sprint, sitting next to me, answered the phone, and you could see she was the recipient of some very bad news, particularly when she covered her mouth, said “Oh my God,” and then her eyes started to well with tears.
I was the first person she said something to, almost as if in a state of shock – which understandably wound up being the case for her and everyone that heard of the news.
“A Hendrick plane is missing. They can’t find it,” she said.
Soon, the media center was abuzz. We were holding out hope upon hope that somehow, some miraculous way, that perhaps the plane diverted to another airport because of the bad flying conditions, or that it simply turned around and returned to Concord, N.C.
Sadly, by the end of the race, it was confirmed that a crash had occurred and that there did not appear to be any survivors. It took nearly eight hours for searchers and rescue personnel to finally reach the wreckage in the rugged mountainside terrain.
I still remember race winner Jimmie Johnson’s ashen face when he was directed away from victory lane, informed about what happened and then was quickly ushered away to mourn with his team. Ditto for Jeff Gordon, who was on the verge of tears himself.
They had just seen in person many of the occupants on the plane just a few days earlier. And now they were gone forever.
Every year since then, I’ve gone by Bull Mountain, stopped, looked and listened to the surroundings, as if hoping to hear some of the victims’ voices once again, then bowed my head and said a silent prayer.
This Saturday, the fifth-year anniversary of the tragic crash, I won’t be there in person, but like the victims who were en route to Martinsville Speedway that day, I’ll be there in spirit, mourning their loss once again, something I’ll never stop doing on every Oct. 24, just like I do on the tragic anniversary of the late Dale Earnhardt’s death on every Feb. 18.
And around 1 pm ET or so, when the crash was believed to have occurred, I’ll softly say the same things I’ve said after each visit to Bull Mountain since that fateful day:
“Rest in peace, my friends.”
Posted by Jerry Bonkowski on 10/20 at 01:30 AMNice article JB. Well written as usual.
-Taglia
