1936 airline crash gets memorial in Fayette
A Uniontown-area man hopes to place a memorial at the Fayette County mountain site of an early airline crash, so that people will remember the 13 passengers and crew who died and the heroine who walked from the wreckage into the dense forest in search of help.
Matthew Kelley and a group of his friends from the Uniontown area plan to place the monument commemorating the fate of the Trans World Airlines flight that crashed April 7, 1936, not far from Laurel Caverns, off Route 40 east of Uniontown. Kelley is also writing a book on the subject that he plans to publish in the fall.
Both the aviation industry and TWA were in their infancy when the Douglas DC-2 on the airline's Sun Racer flight took off at 8:30 a.m. from Newark, N.J., to a stop in Pittsburgh, and an eventual destination in Los Angeles.
Kelley said the flight ran into a storm with near-zero visibility in the skies above Fayette County. The pilot was 50 miles off course and mistook Uniontown for Pittsburgh when the plane crashed into a mountaintop tree.
Kelly said the crew realized its error before impact, but icing on the wings prevented the plane from climbing in time.
The pilot, co-pilot and nine passengers were killed instantly in the crash, and two others were critically injured. Flight attendant (then known as stewardess) Nellie Granger miraculously escaped serious injury.
Granger, then a 22-year-old native of Dravosburg, Allegheny County, found herself encircled in the forest, but she was able to locate what is now Skyline Drive and follow it. "She was incredible. She picked the right direction to go with no visual clues," Kelley marveled.
Granger eventually came upon the cabin of the late Roy Addis, a state forester.
Kelley noted that Addis didn't have a telephone in his cabin, but he did have the next best thing, a Model T, and was able to drive Granger to a phone where she reported the accident. Despite her gallant efforts, the two passengers who survived the initial crash later died from their injuries, leaving Granger the sole survivor.
The disaster made headlines at the time and even inspired a country song by "Happy Go-Lucky Joe Barker" called "The Crash of The Sun Racer." One verse goes, "Her flight was made on schedule till she reached the mountain tall. It's just 12 miles from Uniontown the ship began to fall. Our praise goes to the stewardess who spread the news around, And tried to help the passengers as the ship blazed on the ground."
Nonetheless, Kelley said the crash is largely forgotten. "It's an important part of local history," he said.
An amateur historian and former publisher of a small automobile publication, Kelley knew nothing of the crash until he played a board game one night about a year-and-a-half ago. He said that the game "Uniontown" included a question about the airline crash in the mountains.
His interest piqued, Kelley did research that included tracking down the original National Transportation Safety Board investigation of the accident. The one gap he has to fill in before finishing the book is an account of what became of the heroine of the Sun Pacer flight. Kelley believes Nellie Granger died about six years ago, but his research continues.
He also contacted descendants of area residents who were part of the rescue effort. The descendants are helping Kelley to place the monument at the site, he said.
Frank Mulich, owner of Marshall Monuments in Uniontown, donated a 475-pound granite memorial with the names of the crew and passengers who perished and the flight attendant who survived, and the legend, "In memory of the Sun Pacer that crashed on this spot on April 7, 1936."
Mulich said it's important that everyone is memorialized.
