50TH ANNIVERSARY MEMORIAL IMPORTANT DETAILS

As many of you will know on Saturday May 26th 2012 there will be the 50th anniversary memorial service for Continental Flight 11 in Unionville, Missouri. Many plan to attend the event and Mr Duane Crawford, the local man who kick-started the original push for a memorial is the principal organizer of this event. Duane wanted me to pass on some details of the memorial service to all of you via here.

Firstly Duane's email address is: crawford@nemr.net. This is the best place to contact Mr Crawford  for arranging your visit to Unionville. He will handle all the details or his daughter Sandee will respond either way.

Continental Airlines Flight 11 50th anniversary memorial:


Where & When: North-east corner of Unionville Town Square opposite Veterans Memorial in Unionville, Missouri. If you come from Centerville, Iowa, turn left and stop at the only stop light and then proceed 3-4 blocks to the square.

**The service will commence at 10:30am.

You'll see a large church (Methodist) on your left so if you see this you're heading in the right direction.

In case of inclement weather, the program will be held in the Putnam County R-1 Schools Auditorium. To get to this school, take 19th Street south from the Methodist Church, past two stop signs to Garfield Street. Take a right and go one block to 20th street. Turn left into 20th and you'll see the school.

**There will also be a visit to the crash site afterwards (after lunch) with limited transportation available. Please email Mr Crawford if you wish to see the site.

**What to wear: Casual attire and some good shoes for going into a paddock if you wish to visit the  actual crash site. If you don't wish to visit the site then just normal smart casual clothing.


Lunch: At the Methodist church right after the memorial service.

Dinner and Theatre: Later in the evening there will be a dinner at the Manhattan Restaurant in Centerville, Iowa. Dinner is $17.50 per person and the theatre is $8.50.

Dinner and theater payments simple to expedite things.  During the dinner, we’ll all sit together in one big room and maybe an overflow table or two.  Duane will simply pay the cashier for everyone so you can pay him there and he'll go up and sort out the cheque. 

**Country Music Show at Rathburn Theatre: As for the theatre, Duane will give those attending a ticket or pass that will read “Flight 11, 5/26/12”. Please let Duane know via his email address (top of the page) ASAP.  Duane will have one sheet set of directions to give your driver or co-pilot during dinner.

**To get to the theatre from the Manhattan Restaurant, continue north on Highway 5 from the restaurant, pass the Super 8 and Wal Mart and leave the city limits. It is a 25 minute drive, but watch for deer at night in this rural area. You'll come to a small yellow and blue sign at 6.4 miles from the Manhattan. It's a country road "J29". There is a direction arrow along the road that points towards the direction of theatre. Turn LEFT onto "J29" and cross some railroad tracks after a while. You'll pass through the village of Rathburn shortly thereafter. From there you will come to  4-way stop sign at a 4.4 mile mark from J29. Turn right, cross the Rathburn Dam and continue for about three quarters of a mile. The large metal theatre sits next to the road on the east.

For further contact details please email Mr Crawford ASAP and he will have further contact details for you if you need to phone him etc.

May 2012

It is coming up to nearly the fiftieth anniversary of that day when so many of your had your lives changed forever. 50 years ago ordinary folks boarded Flight 11; a flight that would change so many lives forever after.

It took 48 years for a memorial and around 46 for someone to actually bring what happened back to the fore. 

I started this blog never having even dreamed of what this would bring about. It has been an utter privilege to have you tell your stories to me and for you to open up to a complete stranger on the other side of the world.

Flight 11 has been history, intrigue, disaster, loss, grief, friends and most importantly, family. 

None of the people who have contacted me deserved to lose their loved ones just as much as those aboard did not deserve to die that evening. However the most important thing now is that there is finally the memorial put in place and that this 50th anniversary will firmly cement what happened in Unionville for generations to come. 

---CONTINENTAL AIRLINES FLIGHT 11, MAY 22ND, 1962---

Civil Aeronautics Board Accident Report of 1962

For those who are interested here is the link to the 1962 Civil Aeronautics Board Aircraft Accident Report for Flight 11. Some may find it an interesting read. It's the document that sparked this blog and everything else off.

Go to this link and select "1962" then select the FIRST "CONTINENTAL AIRLINES" link. It will open up a page with a link to the PDF file containing the report. 

Flight 11 Aircraft Accident Report

It only works with Internet Explorer or Firefox apparently. Not Google Chrome.

Flight 11 Kansas-Los Angeles sector

One small "mystery" about Flight 11 is the passengers who were waiting at Kansas City to fly to Los Angeles; obviously with the non-arrival of Flight 11 from Chicago there was no plane to take passengers waiting at Kansas City onward to Los Angeles. I'm assuming they would have been told the flight was cancelled and then returned home or to hotels to await flights the next day. They certainly may have suspected something was amiss with the reaction of waiting relatives at Kansas City...and no doubt the press may have turned up at Kansas City Airport later that evening when reports of Flight 11 being missing were coming in.

At any rate it must have been unusual for those onward waiting passengers bound for LAX to read about the crash in the following days and realize they were meant to be booked on Flight 11s second-leg of that evening.

Ann Berry

A gentleman from California has come forward, via Duane Crawford, to inform us that his wife was meant to work on Flight 11 as a stewardess but her inbound flight was delayed due to a mechanical issue. Ann Berry stepped in as the "standby" crew member. The wife of the gentleman has long remembered and been affected by the death of Ann Berry (her best friend at the time) and the fate of CO11 that evening.

An extremely interesting story and one of those "what could have been/what if" scenarios.

50th Anniversary of Continental Airlines Flight 11 - Important Information

For interested readers of this website, my name is Duane Crawford from Unionville, Missouri, the place where Continental Airlines Flight 11 was sabotaged and destroyed on May 22, 1962.  All 37 passengers and 8 crew members were killed in the crash.

    At 11:00 a.m., on May 26, 2012, a 50th Anniversary Remembrance Service will be held in Unionville to honor the innocent victims of the terrible tragedy.  A good number of the families plan to attend, but the highlight of the event is Andrew Russell's presence here in Unionville.  He will be the main speaker.

   

    Andrew, a young New Zealand college student, inspired our local citizens to build and dedicate a beautiful Flight 11 Memorial in 2010.  His round trip fare and accommodations are being paid for by the generous donations of families and local citizens.

    Much has been written about Flight 11 and the families.  I can be contacted at crawford@nemr.net.  The service is open to the public.

  Duane Crawford

50th anniversary 2012

Well folks, for those that will be going to the 50th anniversary commemoration next year for Flight 11 I am delighted to say I shall be meeting with you as I will be making the 7,900mile flight to the area all that way from Auckland.

I look forward to meeting as many people as possible and to see the memorial first hand.

The first-ever sabotage of a passenger plane

It is known that Flight 11 was the first-ever sabotage of a commercial jet airliner in the United States of America. Interestingly enough I have come across the details of what is believed to be the first-ever sabotage of a passenger aircraft anywhere in the world. For those who are interested here is the small link to the wikipedia article. Makes for an interesting read. And oddly enough, despite its significance, it too has never had a memorial. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_crash_near_Chesterton

Also, just to stop press, a link to the 1933 newspaper article from the Citizen Advertiser newspaper in New York:

http://fultonhistory.com/newspaper%202/Auburn%20NY%20Citizen%20Advertiser/Auburn%20NY%20Citizen%20Advertiser%201933.pdf/Newspaper%20Auburn%20NY%20Citizen%20Advertiser%201933%20-%200105.PDF

A fascinating story...

This was emailed to me by Tim Duley who's father worked at Continental the night that Flight 11 took off from Chicago. The contents of that email tell a remarkable story of that evening and of what is likely the last person to see anyone from CO11 alive. It is as follows...

My name is Tim Duley.  I just visited your blog for Continental Airlines Flight 11.  I am a pilot for jetBlue Airways.  My father, Tom Duley, worked the ticket counter and gates (mostly gates) for Continental Airlines for 23 years.  He had mentioned Continental Flight 11 to me numerous times.  My father was the gate agent working Continental Flight 11.  Here are the details he had told me - hopefully everything I write is accurate.  

A man (Thomas Doty) bought an insurance policy for a million dollars from one of the insurance counters in the terminal.  In those days there was no airport security.  It was like a bus terminal - just walk through to the gates and board your flight.  My father told me that this flight was instrumental in airport security checkpoints.  He also told me that normally the insurance counter would have called the gate to tell him that a passenger (naming the passenger) had just bought a large insurance policy.  My father stated that with that information they would not have allowed the passenger to board.  But for some reason, the insurance counter did not call the gate to report this individual that night.  The passenger (Thomas Doty) and his secretary(possibly girlfriend) arrived to the gate after they had already closed the flight and pulled the airstairs (no jetbridges in those days).  But in those days customer service was very important (I dont know if they tracked on time performace back then which may explain why they boarded him after the aircraft door was already closed).  So my dad had the airstairs pulled back up to the Boeing 707 (may have actually been a Boeing 720?) and Thomas Doty boarded.  My dad mentioned the Captain and told me he was a great pilot, very friendly, a nice gentleman, and my dad had great respect for him.  My dad also told me that the forward flight attendant gave my dad a cup of coffee and said "have a good night Tom!" just before he closed the forward door once again.  He was the last person on the ground to speak personally to the crew.  They later found her dead dangling in a tree after the crash.  My father told me that it was later discovered that the passenger he held the flight for named his wife in the insurance policy, that he had a bomb in his briefcase, and that he set it off in the aft lavatory.  He also told me that the original movie Airport was based on Continental Flight 11, however the outcome of CAL flt 11 was much more tragic.  I think that this flight weighed heavily on my dad for the rest of his life.  My father married my mother who was a Continental flight attendant and former Registered Nurse.  Back then my mother and all flight attendants were forced to quit if they became married or pregnant.  So my mother went back to nursing.  My fathers career took us to LAX where he became a DPS (Director of Passenger Service) agent, then to SAT (San Antonio) where he became a ticket counter supervisor, then to DEN where he worked as a gate agent until his career was ended by Frank Lorenzo.  My father passed away in October 2003.  

This is what I remember from what my father told me about Continental Flight 11.  I apologize if any part of it is inaccurate.  I wish my father was still alive to see the great work you have been doing for the memory of Continental Airlines Flight 11.  Please contact me if you have any questions, comments, or concerns.
Sincerely

Tim Duley       

49 Years Ago

I write this on the eve of the 49th anniversary of that horrendous night when a hand of evil took away your loved ones and changed things forever for you. Since my blog and the determined efforts of Mr Crawford, and the community of Unionville, we finally have a memorial, a marker for what happened, a marker that we will not forget those who were lost that night, and nor will anybody else.

My thoughts and prayers are with all those involved in, and affected by, that awful day 49 years ago over Missouri.