Some random facts about the 1960 Airline Crash:
–The crash was the deadliest U.S. commercial aviation disaster of its time.
–All 127 passengers and crew on both planes died.
–7 people died, who were on the ground in Park Slope.
–It was the first time that a black box recorder was used to provide details to crash investigators.
–The little boy who survived the crash for 26 hours was named Stephen Baltz.
–10 brownstone apartment buildings, the Pillar of Fire Church, the McCaddin Funeral Home, a Chinese laundry and a delicatessen burned.
–Hollis Frampton, an experimental filmmaker, was scheduled to be on the United flight, but decided not to return to New York that day to see a retrospective by photographer Edward Weston in Minneapolis. Frampton said of this decision that he was “never…able to decide whether Weston tried to kill me, or saved my life.” (from Wikipedia).
In addition to the memorial dedicated today at Green-Wood Cemetery, anyone around Seventh Avenue in Park Slope can go to the chapel at Methodist Hospital and see the plaque to Stephen Baltz, with the coins that were in his pocket. There is a picture of the plaque on my blog today, which is probably the first day in my life that I can actually remember where I was 50 years before.