"Reynolds dream ends in plane crash that takes three lives" from the December 7, 1978 Door County Advocate, with a response printed in the December 12, 1978 Door County Advocate
By JOHN ENIGL
Reynolds dream ends in plane crash that takes three lives
By JOHN ENIGL
PART III
At 6:30 on the morning of Saturday, Dec. 4, 1948, Karl Reynolds arrived at the Cherryland airport which he had helped found. Erv Kussow, his secretary, was with him. Ery reminded Karl that the Kussows had a dinner date that night, so he had to be back early. They got the plane out of the hangar and warmed it up. All was ready for the trip to Beaver Dam for the foreign labor meeting.
Lougee Stedman, devotee of chess, manager of the Fruit Growers Cooperative, arrived and greeted the other two as well as George Meredith, who was in charge of the airport.
The Beechcraft Bonanza could have held a fourth passenger but Wally Thenell of Martin Orchards had gotten ill the night before and couldn't go.
Work went on at the Reynolds orchard that day, for the snowless fall and 46 degree temperature permitted Ray Frando to ground spray for weeds in the potato patch. Some workers such as Herb Solway, off from school, were working up the land since there was no frost in the ground. Some workers were pruning or at work in the apple shed.
John Enigl sr. decided he must do something about repairing his barn and the weather, although threatening, did not promise freezing temperatures to prevent concrete work.
Ralph Norton, Reynolds' tall, lanky plant engineer, smiled as he drove, not to the plant, but to Karl Reynolds' house that day. A smile crossed his pleasant, rugged face as he chuckled at what Karl had said to him the day before: "Be sure to finish setting up that model railroad track in the basement before I come back from Beaver Dam, Ralph."
Ralph knew how much the model train would mean to seven year old Bob and four year old Tom, for he had children of his own. Even two year old Karl Jeffrey wasn't too young to enjoy it.
Later that day, this writer left to spend Saturday at the school where he taught, the Detroit Harbor school on Washington Island. There was always something to do at school for a young teacher who was just learning his work.
As I left the school for my 5:30 dinner at the West Harbor Resort, I noticed how foggy it had gotten. I had seen fog there so thick I could barely see the radiator cap of my '29 Chevrolet, but never so late in the year.
As I opened the door of the Chevrolet, I heard the drone of an airplane engine and wondered why someone was flying on an afternoon like this. I started the engine, turned on the headlights, and drove slowly to the resort.
Bud Parmentier took off from Austin Straubel field in Green Bay that afternoon intending to fly to Sturgeon Bay to spend Sunday there. Bud had learned to fly with Karl Reynolds, Doc West, Wally Mickelson, Doc Dorchester and the rest. His training had served him well in the Air Corps during the War.
The weather had been all right for flying when Bud left for Sturgeon Bay's Cherryland airport. But when he got to the Brussels Hill he encountered such a heavy fog bank he decided to return to Green Bay. After all, his home was there. There was no real need for him to get to Sturgeon Bay that night.
Karl Reynolds at the time of his death, Dec. 4, 1948.
Meanwhile, Karl Reynolds, Erv Kassow and Lougee Stedman were attending the foreign labor meeting at the Rogers Hotel in Beaver Dam. Regional personnel manager for the Green Giant Co., Marvin H. Keil, was in charge of the meeting. Keil was also treasurer of the Wisconsin Canners Association. Marvin Keil, still living in Beaver Dam today and active in the National Association of Retired People, filled in the details for me in an interview:
"Karl landed in Fond du Lac and I think we sent a car to pick him up for the meeting. He left after the meeting at 4:30 and went back to the Fond du Lac airport. By that time, it had gotten quite foggy and the gentleman at the airport there warned him against flying in this fog. Karl told them that he could fly by instruments.
"It so happened, ironically, that I was out that night and I got a telephone call. As I was entering my home, the phone was ringing and they wanted to know if I had had a foreign labor meeting that day and if Karl Reynolds had been there. It was Joe Helper of the Beaver Day Daily Citizen. 'Well, Marvin,' he said, 'they're quite concerned up there because his plane hasn't arrived at the airport yet.' He said they couldn't reach me or my wife. We'd gone to a concert. So they'd called the Citizen.
"Reynolds probably chose not to use the Beaver Dam airport because at that time it didn't have a lot of facilities." (The Milwaukee Journal said that bad weather at Beaver Dam had forced them to land at Fond du Lac).
Regarding the reason for the meeting, "The government had discontinued the British West Indies program whereby the canning industry got foreign labor. I called the meeting and I was chairman. Several of us decided that we'd better get together and formulate some plans as to whether we wanted to get BWI labor or try and get some more migrants from the South."
Labor was getting to be a problem, with demands for better housing and higher wages. Ways of harvesting mechanically were developing due to this pressure. Already in 1948 10 percent of corn was harvested by machine, and cotton picking machines were fast replacing humans for this work.
Perhaps Karl Reynolds began to wonder at that meeting of the solution to the labor problem at the Reynolds orchard might not be a mechanical picker. Maybe he wondered if his friend Ray Christianson, who had all the facilities for making the parts, could help. Or maybe he could get his brother Fritz to work on it, since Fritz had left the company and started a machine shop on Georgia st.
Right now, the problem was to get home. Karl, as a lieutenant in the Civil Air Patrol, had plenty of knowledge of instrument flying. As a member of the Flying Farmers Club, he had flown thousands of miles.
His intention was to get back in time for the Kussows to keep their dinner date and for him to be at home for dinner with Harriet and the three boys. Barbara had already gone back to the University at Madison after the Thanksgiving recess.
Karl's plane was seen as it passed over the Manitowoc Airport about 5 p.m., flying at about 300 feet and heading north. His speed was about 140 miles per hour.
The rest of the tragic story was related to me by my brother, Charles, the only living person who saw both the plane and the crash. My father, John sr., and Charles were working on the west side of the barn.
"I was home for the weekend. We used to hear an airplane go over just about twilight. We were told that this plane was on a scheduled flight to Marinette or some place so it wasn't unusual to hear an airplane at that time. We didn't take much notice of this one. We were outside standing by the door of the old horse barn. We did hear an airplane, just about sundown, going quite low this time. It was kind of overcast and a little foggy I think. We didn't take too much notice of the plane, but Father and I both saw the plane go over, the running lights showing distinctly.
"I went almost directly to the house at that point and Father looked up there in that direction and apparently saw a large flash of light. He came into the house and said, 'Something happened, maybe a plane crash!' and we did hear a thud on the window even in our area. It seemed like kind of a jar. You could even hear the jar of the crash from where we were. It turned out to be about two miles away, maybe even closer than that.
"We looked out the window almost immediately, it was out of the west window, and we could see a big flare of light coming up. Again we saw a flare coming up; it must have been the gasoline exploding. It looked to us as if it might have been on the bay. Now, if it had been an airliner it would have been a pretty big amount of light, and we just assumed it would have been seen by somebody else. It was pretty dark already at 5:30 and we saw this flare up, standing by the living room table; it seemed to be about southwest by west from us.
"We turned on the radio, thinking this would be reported pretty soon."
In October, 1948, Ed Allen sr. had applied for a station license for the Door County Broadcasting Co.. Advocate Editor Sumner Harris was also formulating plans to set up a station. The wheels of the Federal Government turn slowly. WOKW, the Advocate station, did not go on the air until 1950, WDOR until 1951. If either had been on the air, they might have provided a beam for Reynolds to fly in on, even though they had to go off the air at local sunset. (However, WMAM in Marinette had been on the air since 1939, broadcasting day and night, so Reynolds may have tuned the station in to get a fix.)
Charles continued: "We talked about what we had seen and decided we should go and find what it's about. At that time we drove down to Carlsville, because we didn't have a telephone.
"George Gibson had the garage at the time and he was thought to be highly knowledgeable so we talked to him. He hadn't heard anything and didn't know what to say, didn't suggest calling the authorities. We stopped at Oscar Kurth's, and they had heard the crash and explosion. Their windows rattled just like in a big thunder storm. They didn't see any light but they heard a big "thud."
"We went back and told Mother about it. I said, 'I think we better go over to Uncle Ed's (Ed Bavry, town clerk of Egg Harbor) and telephone the police? Mother agreed, so we went over there. Uncle Ed wasn't home or was out in the barn, but Aunt Marion (who still lives in the same place today) had a brother in the Civil Air Patrol, Bill Stephenson. She said, 'We're going to have to report that. It might be a crash that no one knows about. So she called up Bill Stephenson.
"He said, 'Karl Reynolds isn't back at the airport yet. This could be Karl Reynolds' plane.'
"Then people got a little more interested. One of the reports I heard later said that after we left, Gibson and Bill Floor had driven around the shore looking for the plane but he did no reporting as far as I know.
"After we called Bill Stephenson we got hold of Don Reynolds. He just couldn't believe it. He said, 'No, it couldn't be Karl. He'll be back sometime soon. It must be somebody else that crashed.'
"It was disbelief on Don's part but it was probably because he didn't want to believe it, knowing it would have to be a pretty serious accident, to say the least.
"While we were still at Aunt Marion's place, someone called and said, "Stay right where you are. We'll come and talk to you there.
"Pretty soon a whole bunch of people came: the sheriff, Hallie Rowe; Don Reynolds. Don was pretty shook up. He said, 'We'll take a plane and look for them tomorrow.' He was still trying not to believe what had probably happened, may have even felt it was a hoax.
"It was decided to start a search immediately. They took us back to our farm and asked, 'Where did you see this flash, exactly?' I remembered where the flash was and said, 'Right in that line,' as I pointed.
"Hundreds of people came out to search for the plane, and they lined them all up in a row with the bearing they got from me, and they got a bearing from Dad, too. The line must have been a half-mile long but they must have missed them by a few hundred feet or so. We thought the plane might be below the bluff, on the lake."
On Washington Island, I was unaware that anything had happened until Monday afternoon when I went to the post office. Mrs. Magnusson, the postmistress, asked, "Is this your father's name in the Chicago Tribune?" That weekend I went home to find out what happened. By then 1 had seen the account in the Door County Advocate of Tuesday, Dec. 7. (This was reprinted in the Sturgeon Bay Centennial issue that went into the Time Capsule.)
My parents told me that all that Saturday night and early Sunday morning cars had come up and down our road. People were trying to find out exactly where Charles and my folks had seen the explosion.
I'm not going to attempt to give the details of the search. Those can be found in the aforementioned Advocate sources. It was a frenzied search by people who knew Karl Reynolds, Lougee Stedman and Erv Kussow well. Ray Christianson got out the Boy Scouts to search, the Scouts with whom Stedman had worked so faithfully. Stedman's fellow choir members front the Congregational Church joined the search. People who had been on the library board with Erv Kussow were out looking for him, knowing they had little chance of finding him alive.
Then there were Karl Reynolds' friends. Active in so many community affairs, he knew everyone who did anything for Door county. The growers who shipped cherries and apples to him searched for him. The farm hands searched for him. Those who knew him only by reputation searched for him.
Marvin Daubner and Harvey Hanson thought they smelled smoke as they drove down the overgrown lumbering road that led off the northwest corner of Marvin's orchard. Not being able to locate the source of the smoke, they drove on through Art Meyer's wooded 40.
It was left for young Alton Krueger, searching alone, to discover the plane and the bodies about 9 a.m. Sunday morning.
Marvin Daubner relates that Alton Krueger came to his house, out of breath, saying, "Well, I found them, but I don't know where they are!"
After calming the young man down, it. Marvin questioned him further and they
pinpointed the location. The police were called.
Many people had been within a few feet of the crash scene the night before, but none had found it.
Hallie Rowe, the sheriff, arrived at the scene after the county police officers. "I can remember searching that night and getting all the information I could from people, and I can remember going over to see your dad. He told me that a plane had flown over and that he had the yard light on. The plane had flown to the west and he had seen a big ball of fire. I understood it was much further away, near the shore.
The next morning word came to me that the plane had been found and I hurried to Carlsville and back of Daubner's farm was the wreckage. The bodies had already been taken away. There were just pieces of the plane laying around. It was just a complete wreck of small pieces.
''Karl had flown in fog many times but I believe this time he was lost. I believe he saw those street lights at Carlsville and he tried to make a left turn with his plane, and in doing so lost altitude and the plane struck the top of the trees and he crashed.
Whether the plane I heard on Washington Island that night was Reynolds has never been established.
Dr. Dorchester and Frank Ullsperger, a C.A.P. official at that time, blamed the lack of radio beacons on the ground at Cherryland airport for the crash. There were lights on the field but Fritz Reynolds, who was sitting in his shop just before the crash with Henry Overbeck, said the lights dimmed at that time. He thinks the lights at the field may have dimmed or gone out just as Karl was nearing the field. The altimeter probably read wrong due to the difference in air pressure between Fond du Lac and Egg Harbor.
Perhaps it was too foggy to see Third av. and the rest of Sturgeon Bay. Maybe if there had not been a ban on Christmas street lighting that year some of those colored lights would have pierced the fog and Karl and his friends would have found the airport.
The Reynolds Bros. office at Christmas, 1932.
So ended the lives of three of Door County's most valued citizens. Of Karl Reynolds, Ray Christianson says, "He was in love with the community. He was all for the community in all phases. He was a very big man; one of the truly big men Door county has produced and it has produced a good many. From the standpoint of overall concern for the county there hasn't been a bigger man than Karl Reynolds.
As Marvin Keil said, "He was a brilliant fellow, a very articulate man, and a good executive."
At the beginning of this story, I said that I don't feel I still have a complete picture of this great man, or the company he helped build. I hope to get more information from those who knew him. Gary Richards has offered to help me on the aviation part of the story.
My feeling is that people are not really dead if we remember them and Karl Reynolds is well remembered.
(The End)
APPRECIATED SERIES
I have been following closely the series of articles by John Enigl on Karl Reynolds. In reading the articles I have been particularly gratified by all the considerate and thoughtful things my father's contemporaries had to say about him. It is a source of pride for me to think that he is so well thought of 30 years after his death.
On behalf of my mother; my brothers, and my sister, I wish, to thank the Advocate and Mr. Enigl for his fine memorial.
TOM REYNOLDS
Letter and article courtesy of the Door County Library Newspaper Archive