THE GREAT AIRPLANE CRASH

RIGHT:  A photo of the biplane that crashed about 1912.  The plane went down near the present intersection of Navarro (Hwy 6) and Cato, about where the R.D. Wright home is now located.  The school kids ran to the scene of the crash as most had never seen an air plane.

    James Upshaw wrote of the event. “Some time in the late 1900’s probably before World War I my granddad, Henry Locke was the proprietor in charge of the Lambert (Hotel), next door to the depot.  Henry had a wife Anna, and four daughters and two sons, to help manage  the hotel.  The girls were Ida, Minne Lee , Lilly Mae, and Roxie Anna (James’ mother).  The two sons were Velma and Doyle.

     One of mother’s chores was to make up beds and take meals to the guests who couldn’t come to the dinner table.  One day, a barnstorming airplane circled over De Leon, and crashed on the north side of town.  The airplane he was flying did not have an air-cooled engine, but used a radiator for it’s cooling.  The plane crashed and the pilot was pinned under the wreckage, and hot, steamy coolant was dripping on him.  He was rescued by the spectators, and taken to the Lambert Hotel to recover.  My mother was the one to take him his meals and help nurse him back to health.  The pilot did recover and left De Leon under his own power.

   Mother must have used that story dozens of times in order to discourage me from the dangers of aviation and flying small airplanes.  She would say, ‘You never know when you might crash and be scalded to death, in one of those contraptions.’”