Rescuers work at the scene of a Braniff Airways plane crash Aug. 22, 1954, south of Swaledale. The pilot was attempting to land at the Mason City Airport. Twelve of the 19 people aboard were killed in the crash. ELWIN MUSSER/Globe Gazette file photo
Raskin, 63, and Savage, 66, are regularly reminded of the Braniff Airways plane that crashed on Aug. 22, 1954, as the pilot attempted to land at Mason City Municipal Airport.
Twelve of 19 passengers were killed, including Raskin’s and Savage’s mother, Goldie Raskin, and their grandmother, Sarah Wolfson.
For Raskin, every year when he reads and hears about the Winter Dance Party in Clear Lake, the wound opens up a little.
He has no connection with Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens or the Big Bopper.
But news accounts recalling the 1959 plane crash that took the lives of the three singers and pilot Roger Peterson make him think of “the other plane crash,” as he calls it.
Raskin was 9 years old when his mother and grandmother were killed. His sister was 12.
“I’m 63 now and I can tell you, when I heard about the big weekend in Clear Lake, I thought about the other plane crash. It seemed like all the pain and all the grief came right back,” he said.
Raskin, a writer and promoter, said he’s a music fan and thinks it’s great that the memory of the three singers is celebrated.
“But ordinary people die, too, in catastrophic accidents and they leave thousands of survivors,” said Raskin.
Time passes but the scars remain, he said.
“Both my sister and I remember how difficult it was to go to school and be treated differently because our mom had been killed in a plane crash.
“It is truly amazing how people still react, even today, when they ask about our growing up and we mention the crash. They don’t know how to react or what to say.
“I always try to be upbeat and tell them it was a long time ago. But it is very awkward,” he said.
The Raskin family lived in Omaha in 1954. Goldie Raskin was accompanying her mother on a medical appointment to the Mayo Clinic.
They had taken a United Airlines flight from Omaha to Des Moines and intended to take another United flight to Minneapolis. But there was a two-hour delay, said Raskin, so his mother and grandmother opted to take a Braniff flight that left earlier.
The plane crashed in a field about three miles from Swaledale as the pilot attempted to land in Mason City during a fierce rainstorm with high winds.
Savage, a psychotherapist and motivational speaker, said everyone deals with grief in different ways.
“In our case, the deaths were not handled well with my brother and I. We weren’t allowed to go to the funerals and no one ever talked about the crash. It was like it just disappeared.
“Lee thinks about it when things come up like the Buddy Holly event. I think about it, too, like when the bodies of the servicemen were brought home and no one was allowed to view them.
“I wanted to find a DC-3 like the one my mother was on so I could go on it and get a sense of where she was and what happened to her.”
When Savage got that opportunity, it was on a corporate DC-3 so it wasn’t quite the same. Nonetheless, she was able to get a feel for what it was like — and the chance to meditate quietly and talk to her mother.
“In grief, some people are able to make the journey more comfortably than others,” she said. “Everyone has to deal with it in their own way.”
Savage has written extensively about grief, and articles have been written about her.
On her Web page, she has a headline that is evidence of the wound that just won’t close for Savage and her brother.
It says, “My mother’s plane keeps crashing.”
south6stkid wrote on Feb 10, 2009 10:10 AM: