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On May 6th, 1981 a mechanical failure caused an Air Force jet, the Aria
328, to crash in a farmer's field in Walkersville. All 21
crewmembers were killed.
"I left school and came up here, made my way around the police
lines, to the scene, says
Denn. The plane had broke up in the air,
so there wasn't too much left to see."
When Denn later returned to the crash site he found two items
from the crewmembers: a dog tag and a name tag from a flight suit.
He wanted to give them to relatives of the crash victims, but he could
never find them. That is, until one day three years ago when he was
surfing the Internet.
"I typed in one of the names of one of the crewmen who I had his
item. And it took me to a website called flyaria.com where it was an
online memorial for the crew, he says.
Denn got in touch with Randy Losey, the website's founder, who
returned the items to the families. But both men wanted to do even more,
so they began planning a memorial to the crewmembers in Walkersville.
"Because of David being able to provide some of that information,
that was the first time that I realized that this accident affected more
than the people directly, myself included, with the people that died that
day, says Losey.
The Aria 328 memorial will be built at Walkersville Heritage Farm
Park. Organizers say they hope to have it open by Memorial Day 2008.
"The base of the memorial is 328 inches, reflecting aria 328 the
tail number, the center pedestal with have the 21 names of the crew
members of them, says Losey.
When
the plane went down it was on a training mission from Ohio to the Atlantic
Ocean. So the memorial is designed to be a direction indicator
pointing west, or what Losey calls, "the way back home.
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