Fifty years after a plane with 92 people on board crashed in Loudoun County, Virginia, a memorial honoring the victims is set to be unveiled.
The afternoon of Dec. 1, 1974, was quiet in the town of Bluemont — until residents were shaken by what happened on the mountain.
TWA Flight 514, a Boeing 727 from Columbus, Ohio, bound for Washington, had been diverted from what was then National Airport to Dulles. On its approach, the plane crashed into Mount Weather. Everyone on board was killed.
News footage shows wreckage and airplane parts.
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Bluemont residents recently shared their memories of the crash.
“I was 9 and we had a cabin in the mountains. We were on our way home from that Sunday – we had gone up for the weekend – and we heard the impact,” said Lisa Seeberger with the Bluemont Citizens Association. “We had no idea, of course, what had happened, but we saw the ambulances from Marshall and fire trucks began going down the road."
Since the crash, people have come to a rock on Blue Ridge Mountain Road, an impromptu place of remembrance and mourning.
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“The crash occurred on private property, so sadly there never was a memorial done,” Scott Seeberger, with the association, said.
As the Dec. 1 anniversary of the crash approaches, the town is preparing for a more fitting remembrance. They will unveil a monument in front of the town center, which was a school at the time of the crash and served as a command center and morgue during post-crash operations.
There also will be a plaque bearing the names of the victims and honoring those who answered the call: the first responders and the ordinary townspeople who mobilized in the aid of strangers,
“They started organizing who was cooking what. They got donations from Safeway. They got donations from local restaurants,” Rachel Wetherill, of the association, said.
The memorial is aimed at offering some comfort to people with horrible memories of the day of the crash.
Resident Cynthia Morris recalled a message from the sister of one of the victims.
“‘And Celeste’s email said to us that ‘Suddenly Cathy’s become real again, thanks to a group of strangers,'” she said.
Residents say the plane crash a half-century ago has had a lasting effect on air travel and safety. Among them, in the way pilots and air traffic controllers communicate.
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“The flight crew was confused with regard to how low they could descend while flying this approach to Dulles,” Scott Seeberger said. “The second thing that happened was the creation or the mandatory installation of something called a ground proximity warning system.”
Out of one tragedy, countless others have been averted.
