Tragedy strikes when least expected

Things like this you remember vividly

Friday June 11th, 1982. My friend Alan Nieder was famous for being an early riser; and me, more of a night owl. At any rate, he had a knack for stopping by early on a random morning just to find a noisy way to wake me up.

But this time was different. In the early hours of this overcast, rainy day he came barging in my room yelling some mumbo jumbo about a helicopter crash and I knew he was serious.

As we are driving along a few minutes later, he excitedly recounts "The boys, (his brothers Les and Wes) saw a helicopter go down, and it's right up CC on Morris's place". As the crow flies, the location he's describing is a mile from my house and we'd be there soon...

As we pulled up, burning helicopter wreckage become clearly visible and we knew that no one could have survived that.

The rest of the story is here: https://batescountynewswire.blogspot.com/2015/01/history-of-bates-county-tragedy-strikes.html

Thanks to neighbor Donna White for providing these newspaper clippings dated June 17th, 1982 that jarred my memory -Doug Mager