Rio Grande Herald (Rio Grande City, Tex.), Vol. 31, No. 47, Ed. 1 Thursday, December 27, 1973 Page: 6 of 20
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THE RIO GRANDE CITY HERALD PAGE 6, 1973 THURSDAY, DECEMBEF
First Fatality In Airline History
Pilot Dies Before Making
Emergency Landing
UFO Hunter
Has No Luck
DETROIT — For most
of the 90 Detroit-bound passen
gers, an American Airlines
flight from Boston began nor-
mally enough.
Except when a voice over the
cabin loudspeaker asked if a
doctor was aboard to treat a
passenger.
They didn't know the ailing
traveler was their pilot. Nor did
Texas Baptist
Mission Offering
Passes Million
DALLAS - For the first time
in history, Texas Baptists have
raised more than $1 million
through the Mary Hill Davis
State Misc;,>ns Offering.
Eula Mae Henderson,
executive secretary of the
Woman's Missionary Union,
announced Friday the offering
forState Missions reached
$1,010,058.
The state missions offering -
named for a pioneer missionary
woman - goes toward tur-
thuring the Christian witness in
Texas.
The expenditures go toward
college scholarships for Latin
American Spanish-speaking
students, work along the Rio
Grande River, resort area
ministries, and special projects,
such as ministering to street
people of Dallas and Houston,
and aiding in other areas,
according to Dr. Charles
Mclaughlin, secretary of the
State Missions Commission.
they know he would be dead of a
heart attack before the plane
could m?lre an emergency
landing in Syracuse, N.Y.
The inflight death Thursday
night of Boeing 727 pilot Philip
L. Brooks, 50, reportedly was
the first such fatality in Ameri-
can Airlines' 38-year history.
Copilot Joseph Hunt told air-
line officials he glanced to his
left to see Brooks slumping for-
ward in his seat, apparently
stricken by a heart attack 31,-
000 feet somewhere above New
York State.
Putting the plane on automat-
ic pilot, Hunt used the plane's
intercom to put out his call for a
doctor. There wasn't one
aboard.
But moments later, 65-year-
old Marie MacDonald, a retired
nurse from Boston, entered the
cockpit to offer her help. She
was on her way to Saginaw,
Mich., to visit relatives for the
holidays.
With the pilot placed in a rear
cockpit seat, Mrs. MacDonald
recalled, she applied first aid
and mouth-to-mouth resus-
citation. Brooks didn't respond.
The copilot was preoccupied
making emergency landing
preparations at Syracuse, 20
minutes away.
As the plane approached the
runway of Syracuse's Hancock
Field, Brooks died in Mrs. Mac-
Donald's arms. She said she
waited until the crew landed the
aircraft before telling them.
"They were too busy decid-
ing...how to get the plane
down," she said. "There was
nothing more I could do or they
could do."
Only after the jet taxied to a
halt and an ambulance raced up
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alongside were the passengers
lold the pilot had died.
Mrs. MacDonald said the
copilot stood up in the cockpit
after the landing, his face pale,
and "thanked me for my help."
The passengers were put
aboard another plane and flown
to Detroit.
"The crew did a terrific job,"
Mrs. MacDonald said from her
relatives' Saginaw home FYi-
day. "They never lost their
cool."
DECATUR,-Jim
Ferritto is a sort of hunter of
Unidentified Flying Objects,
but he admits he hasn't seen
one yet.
He is a member of Mutual
UFO Network (MUFON), a
group of scientists, engineers
and other professionals who as-
semble and catalogue informa-
tion on reporting sightings.
It is only right that he should
be living here, only a few miles
down the road and a couple of
turns from one of the most
talked about UFOs in Texas
history.
This is the Aurora case. A
UFO reportedly collided with a
windmill and disintegrated at
Aurora April 19, 1897
The 76-year-old case was re-
vived recently and afforts were
made to determine if the pilot
was buried in the Aurora Cem-
etery as some believe. The
cemetery association inter-
vened and nothing came of the
effort.
The Aurora incident was not
the reason Ferritto came here,
however. He was transferred
here by Union Poco, a UNION
Oil Co. subsidiary. He is a re-
search chemist.
The tendency to dismiss
UFOs as a hoax is diminishing,
Ferritto told Larry Grauerholz
of the Wichita Falls Times in
an interview.
He said more and more
scientists are saying, "Let's
find out what they are."
• 0-
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Trejo, Raul. Rio Grande Herald (Rio Grande City, Tex.), Vol. 31, No. 47, Ed. 1 Thursday, December 27, 1973, newspaper, December 27, 1973; Rio Grande City, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth194439/m1/6/: accessed July 11, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting Rio Grande City Public Library.