lwinger
Joined: 21 Jun 2006
Posts: 229
Location: Tustin, CA
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 Posted: Sun Aug 31, 2008 8:05 pm Post subject: Sad News |
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Forwarded at the request of William Wynne.
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Friends,
I just got a call from a friend who had seen the story of Ken's accident. I
read the news story, and some of the comments. It just left me feeling sick. I had just spent an hour in Ken's company at the Arlington airshow. He had not yet flown his plane. It was the first time I ever met him in person. I had spoken with him on the phone and e-mailed many times, and as photos showed, he was technical and did very nice work. Meeting him in person showed a much more animated and positive guy than e-mail or even the phone conveyed. He had a lot of photos of his plane with him, and he was very interested in flying his plane down to California after the time was flown off. His personality makes it very hard to think of him as gone.
The newspaper report in which some person alleged he was doing aerobatics in the pattern of an airport shows how low the standards of local journalism can be. The last line in Teddy Roosevelt's "The Arena" speech is "If he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory or defeat." Usually irresponsible writing makes me mad, but in this case I just think that Ken's values could not even be remotely understood by the writer.
My heart goes out to Ken's family and close friends. Even though flying
might have been one of the great joys in his life, today that will likely be
little comfort to the people who will miss him the most. Teddy Roosevelt's son Quentin was shot down and killed in the final months of WWI. All of Teddy's personal philosophy failed to lessen his anguish, and he died emotionally broken six months later. He had the unbearable burden of knowing that his sons had tried to live up to their father's philosophy. I certainly don't expect words written 98 years ago to mean much to those who grieve for Ken today. However, hopefully in time they will help to put his choices in context and make the loss of him somewhat more bearable.
As always, actual investigators place very low value on "eyewitness"
reports. In the long run, we may get more information from official sources. Until then, I would like to thank everyone in advance for not speculating on Ken's tragic accident. If anyone on this list knew Ken personally and would like to share anything about what kind of a person he was, I would like to hear from them.
Will someone who is also on the 601 list please forward this to that group.
Thank you.
William Wynne
5000-18 HWY 17 #247
Orange Park, FL 32003 USA
_http://FlyCorvair.com/hangar.html_ (http://www.flycorvair.com/hangar.html)
- August Update 2008
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_________________
Larry Winger
Tustin, CA
Plans building 601XL/650 with Corvair
Installing fuel system
www.mykitlog.com/lwinger |
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