On March 28th 1964, the Facilities Management Corp, company plane was returning to home base in Long Beach from its monthly rotation. Once a month it would go to Wake Island and take a group of Filipino Employees to the P.I. for vacation and return to Long Beach. On this fateful flight our close neighbors the Cope Family, Capt Baker and Crew, Mr. Printz , Mrs Heckler the Station Managers wife and one other passenger boarded the plane in Wake. In Honolulu, Mrs. Heckler decided for some reason to get off and get on a Pan Am filght to Long Beach. That decision saved her life. Between Honolulu and Long Beach the plane gave one Mayday and disappeared from the face of this earth. It was devastating for us all on Wake, and especially for those of us who lived in the FMC housing on the Wilkes side of Wake. We were a very small group of houses unlike the larger FAA housing area and all very, very close. I was scheduled to go with Capt. Baker on the next Rotation/flight and stay with him at his place in Nevada. To this day I still think of them 50 years later. Ron Skates check-six/lib/Famous_Missing/N4726V.htm
Posted on: Tue, 30 Dec 2014 10:38:00 +0000