Writober: DRAGONS
This event actually happened two years before I was born, but I grew up on the story and when my family moved to Mountlake Terrace, Washington in 1973 I went looking for the place this plane crashed and learned something when I was very young about human psychology.
People have a way of not remembering things that scare them, that are so far out of the norm it doesn’t fit into their sense of reality.
9 years after this plane crashed into a residential neighborhood and we moved to Terrace , people who were living in the area at the time never talked about it or ‘remembered it’.
In fact, it actually became an Urban Legend of sorts. I remember being told this never happened or that the plane crashed in Lake Washington which was miles and miles away from Mountlake Terrace.
But before we moved to Terrace and we were living in Seattle I remember one of my Grandma Ginger’s sisters telling the story about the plane that crashed a few blocks away from where she lived and how scared she still got when planes flew over her house ( she moved shortly after the crash ).
I knew a plane crashed in Mountlake Terrace, I knew people died and I wondered why the people who lived there didn’t.
On April 21, 1962, an Air Force F102 airplane – part of a squadron performing at opening day ceremonies for the Seattle World’s Fair — crashes into two homes in a Mountlake Terrace neighborhood (now part of Shoreline.) One home is empty – its owners are on vacation — but the second home’s occupants are killed instantly. (From History Link)
Site of Air Force F102 crash following World’s Fair opening day ceremonies, Mountlake Terrace, April 21, 1962
Courtesy MOHAI (1986.5.86.1)
The home was now a huge blackened hole, with only the recreation room left standing. Tattered roofing hung about, splintered wood littered every square foot of the ground, and parts of the concrete foundation still remained, leaving remnants of the house that once stood in the same place.
The debris trail from the Rutka house led across the road to where the Smith’s” house once stood. Their burned car sat in the driveway and their house was gone. Rutka said neighbors who witnessed the crash told his father that the Smiths were home, and Raymond Smith had opened the front door to see what the noise was just a split second before the impact occurred. ( FROM MLT NEWS)
I imagine one could never forget a plane crashing in your neighbourhood. I love watching planes, my son was in the Air Force, we lived and worked at Heathrow for years. Fortunately I have never seen any mishaps, but often dream of seeing a plane fall out of the sky. One of the Red Arrows display team did crash at Bournemouth Air Festival after a display, in a field and out of sight, but I still recall the chill when when somebody had just heard the news and said ‘One of the Red Arrows has come down.’
That’s some serious fire from above. How interesting that people would say it didn’t happen.
I remember when some of my friends ( who lived there at the time ) would talk about it, there was always someone- another kid an adult who just shut the story down cold. The only thing I can attribute that to now is fear. As a sidenote- a lot of the families who lived in that area worked for Boeing or were in the military so maybe it was just to much for them to process.