The place where we have rented a housekeeping cottage for the last decade and more in New Hampshire  has a neat little portion of their office given over to retail. Over the years we acquired cute little stuffed toys with a wilderness theme for our granddaughter. Eventually we took our granddaughter with us on a few occasions, to introduce her to the effort and pleasures of mountain climbing. Last year we noticed on their shelves a self-published book by a local resident, recalling incidents of a historical nature revolving around the White Mountains. And we bought a copy of Shrouded Memories: True Stories for the White Mountains of New Hampshire, by Floyd W. Ramsey, a former schoolteacher fascinated by the history of his region.

I only began reading it finally a few days ago. And, as coincidence would have it, the first entry was one that has resonance in a way with the recent dreadful, deliberate mass murder of 149 people, plus the suicidist-co-pilot who had planned their murder in his destruction of Lufthansa's economy carrier Germanwings Flight 9525 over the French Alps whose horrible results are even now reverberating around the world.

In 1959, however, it was the hour-long flight of Piper Comanche N5324P owned by 60-year-old Dr. Ralph Miller, ferrying a heart specialist colleague, 32-year-old Dr. Robert Quinn, in an emergency flight from West Lebanon Airport to Berlin, New Hampshire that took local attention. On the staffs at Dartmouth Medical College, Mary Hitchcock Memorial Hospital and the Hitchcock Clinic, the elder doctor was a professor of pathology, and had flown aircraft for the past two decades.

The national and state forests of New Hampshire in the midst of a snowy winter particularly back then comprised a little-patrolled wilderness area, inaccessible during the winter months, with few roads available for patrol. Their plane, taking off in inclement conditions, ran out of fuel, though they thought the engine had stalled. The pilot, a veteran of two Arctic research flights for Dartmouth College and a member of the Lebanon Civil Air Patrol, certainly had ample experience in such flights.

The plane ferried the two doctors with its pilot attempting to reach Whitefield Airport by radio, into continuing poor weather conditions. Around nine in the evening the Civil Aeronautics Authority was alerted to the plane's disappearance; the doctors' wives raising the alert when their husbands failed to return home.

Mike Dickerman photo The Piper Comanche plane piloted by Dr. Miller was found flipped over and leaning against trees on May 5, 1959, more than two months after the crash occurred. Though both Miller and his passenger, Robert Quinn, survived the initial crash, they succumbed to the harsh elements of a North Country winter four days later. Photo reprinted from the book, "Lincoln and Woodstock, New Hampshire," published by Bondcliff Books, Littleton, NH.

 

A concentrated air and ground search took place over the next eight days. Private planes, military helicopters, Air Force, Army National Guard and Civil Air Patrol planes all took part, but the plane and its passengers were not sighted. There were ground forces comprised of volunteers from the National Guard, state police, conservation officers, civilian personnel and the Dartmouth Outing Club. Where originally some thought the two missing men would have a 50% chance of surviving the extreme cold, snow storms and the winter-unforgiving terrain, as time went on, hopes plunged.

Search efforts were eventually called off. And then, resumed by air, by the decree of the state governor. A pilot finally sighted the plane that had gone down on February 21, on May 5, upside down, fifteen air miles from Whitefield, 12 miles north of Lincoln, New Hampshire. A ground party soon began the trek into the wilderness area to retrieve the men's bodies. When they arrived at the crash scene the men were found, one near the plane, the other lying on a trail; nearby hurriedly-constructed snowshoes made of yellow birch and surgical tape. One of the men wore a winter parka and boots, the other street clothes, his shoes missing.

They left notes behind them, chronicling their agonizing wait for rescue and their attempts to rescue themselves by following the trail, until they found it to peter out, and they had returned to the crashed plane, until they finally gave up hope of rescue, and died of starvation, privation, wounds, and the cold.

Investigators established later that had the two men continued where they thought the trail had stopped, they would have reached a U.S. Forest Service North Fork cabin, eight-tenths of a mile off, where they had turned back, equipped with a stove, blankets, and food.

Thoreau Falls Valley – Pemigewasset Wilderness, New Hampshire