Man remembers fellow passengers 50 years after first crash of Piedmont Airlines

Phil Bradley shivered in lonely silence on the mountain by the demolished plane. His injuries left him unable to move. He knew better than to look at the bodies of his fellow passengers. If help didn’t come soon, he realized he’d face a more agonizing death than any of them had.

That was 50 years ago. Bradley, now an 83-year-old grandfather, is the sole survivor of Piedmont Airlines Flight 349. Friday will mark the anniversary of the day it crashed into the side of a mountain near Charlottesville, Va., killing the three-member crew and 23 passengers. It was the first fatal crash for the airline, then just 11 years old. It was front-page news for days in Winston-Salem, then the headquarters for Piedmont. The co-pilot, 26-year-old Bascom Lee Haley, had grown up in the Twin City. The flight attendant, 21-year-old George Weldon Hicks, was from Lexington, N.C.

Bradley, a union representative who was en route to his home near Roanoke, wasn’t acquainted with the passengers or crew. But in the years since, he’s come to know them through countless conversations with their survivors. And he’s answered their numerous questions about the final moments. “He’s helped me a lot in bringing closure,“ said Mike Haley of Winston-Salem, who was a toddler when his father, the co-pilot, was killed.

Bradley has co-authored a book, The Crash of Piedmont Flight 349 into Buck’s Elbow Mountain, and set up a memorial to the victims about a mile and half from where the crash occurred. He’ll mark the 50th anniversary with a ceremony there Saturday remembering the victims. “I have a growing spiritual attachment to them as I grow older,“ Bradley said last week from his Monroe home.

He tells a fascinating story. “It’s crazy, the things you can go through,“ he said. “But I’m tough.“

Seeing Jesus

The crash happened about 8:40 p.m. on Oct. 30, 1959, a Friday night. The plane had taken off from Washington, D.C., and was scheduled to stop in Charlottesville, Lynchburg and Roanoke. Bradley, then 33, had been on a business trip in Oklahoma City and boarded the plane in D.C. He’d missed his connection on an earlier flight, and was the last to board Flight 349. He took the last open seat, all the way in the rear of the cabin on the right.

The flight, aside from minor turbulence, seemed routine. Passengers in seats ahead of Bradley were laughing and joking, many of them no doubt happy to be headed home after a week of work.

Then Bradley heard what sounded like the wings hitting trees. “I ducked my head down,“ he said.

The plane, going about 160 mph, hit the side of the mountain. Bradley said he heard “a tremendous sound, a crunching of metal” then a noise like an ocean’s roar as he was thrown from the plane.

And then he saw something he said he didn’t feel comfortable disclosing until years after the crash. He saw a vision of Jesus Christ. “He looked at me and said, ‘Be concerned not. I will be with you always,‘ “ Bradley said. “I could see his eyes blinking and his lips moving.“

The next thing he knew, he was lying on the ground about 65 feet from the plane, still strapped in his seat, his mouth full of dirt and leaves. He yelled out to his fellow passengers. There was nothing but silence on the rugged and remote mountain.

Bradley unstrapped himself from his seat and tried to stand, but realized his feet were facing in opposite directions. He had a dislocated hip, sprains and bruises and two teeth had been knocked out. But he had a strong constitution, emotionally as well as physically. While serving in the Naval Armed Guard he’d been 500 feet off Omaha Beach on D-Day in World War II.

On the mountain, luggage was scattered about. A small panel ripped from the plane bore the airline’s emblem, a red-winged aircraft against a field of blue.

Bodies would later be found inside and outside the plane. Bradley kept his eyes off them.

“I didn’t have any need to look at them,“ he said. “I saw enough of that at Normandy.“

Bradley noticed a coat up in a tree, which had apparently belonged to one of the crew members. He took a stick, pulled it down, and put it on. He used his seat cushion as a pillow.

The hours dragged by. A bear and her cub walked nearby. Bobcats screamed out. Bradley, a Catholic, lost count of the number of “Hail Marys” and “Our fathers” he said.

He could hear human voices from afar. He saw search planes. He hollered for help until he was hoarse. He tried to sleep, but the pain and cold kept waking him up.

“I was thinking about starting a fire, but I smelled the fumes from the plane and thought better of that,“ he said.

A massive search by air and land had begun within hours of the crash. The Journal was filled with stories about the crash, including an interview with the co-pilot’s father, Archie Haley of Winston-Salem. “He always wanted to fly,“ Haley said of his son.

A passenger list was published that included “E. Phillip Bradley, 33, of Clifton Forge, Va., a representative of the International Association of Machinists (AFL-CIO).“

Staring down buzzards

Saturday - Halloween - dragged by. Bradley said he was always confident he’d be rescued. But after dawn broke Sunday, numerous buzzards began perching on tree limbs above him. “You cannot out-stare a buzzard,“ he said. “You just look at them and they just look right back at you ... I’d thrash a stick around every once in a while, just to let them know I was still there.“

Later that morning, Bradley heard the shouts of a rescue team that had hiked in. The rescuers wanted to airlift him out. He asked that they carry him up to the top of the mountain, where a helicopter could more safely land. The last thing he needed was another plane crash, he said. A doctor gave him some morphine to kill his pain.

Hours later, he was in a Charlottesville hospital, watching the Redskins game. Life would soon return to normal for him. But he knew all too well that that wouldn’t be the case for the families of his fellow passengers. As he recovered, they were burying their dead.

Haley was an Air Force veteran and the father of two young children. Mike Haley and his sister, Debbie Haley Angel of Clemmons, said that their mother, Ivey Haley, had to go work after the crash to support her family. She never remarried. She died six years ago, still very much in love with her late husband, her children said.

The flight attendant, George Hicks, had been planning on going to the Air Force Academy. His sister, Diane Hicks Skidmore of Norwood, constantly thinks about him. “You never really forget,“ she said. “They’re in your heart.“

Officials said a navigational error caused the crash, and noted that a contributing factor may have been mental stress on the part of the pilot, 32-year-old George Lavrinc of Norfolk, Va.

Bradley filed a lawsuit against the airline and settled out of court. By the terms of the agreement, he said, he can’t disclose the settlement amount. But he wasn’t angry at the airline, he said.

Flying doesn’t scare him. He even got his own private pilot’s license several years after the crash. “I figured if I went down again, it would be my fault,“ he joked.

Back to the mountain

Like many members of The Greatest Generation, Bradley doesn’t engage in a lot of public introspection. The crash didn’t leave him with any emotional baggage such as nightmares, he said. He doesn’t wonder why he was the sole survivor. “I didn’t make that decision,“ he said. “God made that decision.“

He said that God probably took the other passengers “to heaven with him before he took care of me . I say prayers for them, that they’re in a good place and everything’s going well for them.“

God was there for the other passengers, Bradley said.

And so is he. When he returns to the mountain Saturday, he won’t be alone. He’ll be with the families of his fellow passengers. And in spirit, he’ll be with the victims. “I’m with them pretty much all the time, anyway.“