ST. ANNE, Ill. (AP) - Thirty-five years ago Monday, Oswald “O.J.” Grazis was drinking coffee and reading a magazine at his family’s farm home about three miles northwest of St. Anne when he was shaken out of his relaxation.
“I could feel the ground vibrate and looked out wondering what was going on,” he said. “I saw a column of smoke coming up and thought it was maybe an accident where the road curves.”
That’s Kankakee County 5000S Road about a quarter mile east of his home.
But it wasn’t a car crash, as he soon discovered when he drove east past a forested sand dune on the south side of the road and “saw a pit with smoke just pouring out and debris all over.”
It was the broken and burning remains of a twin-engine Cessna Baron airplane and its six passengers. Three were sophomores at Riverside Brookfield High School - Mary Dow, Allison Newman and Jimmy Kukral - plus Allison’s mother, Elizabeth, and Jimmy’s parents, Joan and Dr. John Kukral, the pilot.
Kurkral, an experienced pilot with more than 2,500 hours flying, had taken off from Midway Airport at 8 a.m., heading for Atlanta, Ga., then on to Florida for spring break.
According to the Kanakakee County coroner’s inquest, he had radioed the tower and got permission to climb from 11,000 feet to get above a cloud bank. At 15,000 feet, he reported icing and “one minute later the plane was reportedly crashed.”
O.J.’s father, also Oswald, was driving home from Wichert when he saw the plane heading down toward his home at “a high, terrific speed and I knew it wasn’t going to come out,” he said at the coroner’s inquest. “… It went over that hill and when it hit, it blew up.”
He went home, phoned the sheriff, then went back to find debris scattered everywhere and in a pit he figured was 9 feet deep. “When they dug it out it was about 12 feet,” he said.
On Monday, three surviving sisters of Mary Dow - Barbara Dow, Margaret Dow and Toni Dow Schuster - plus two nieces, two nephews and a friend, came to the home of O.J. and Kathy Grazis to be escorted to the site where Mary had died.
“It took us 35 years to thank you and say God bless you for what you went through, you and your dad,” Margaret said to O.J. “We have suppressed so much.”
O.J. knows exactly what she meant. “Really I don’t remember much,” he said later. “I was too much in shock. I can’t imagine what those firemen who had to deal with it.”
At the scene, a flat, wet field empty of anything but last year’s tilled corn stubble, the family members scattered out across a couple acres and toward the treed dune to the west. A nephew waved a metal detector back and forth, thinking maybe some piece of the disaster may have survived 35 years.
“I feel good here, O.J.,” Barbara said. “This is a nice place. I feel peaceful.”
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Online: The (Kankakee) Daily Journal, https://bit.ly/1mW10lL
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Information from: The Daily Journal, https://www.daily-journal.com
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