Plane crash kills Navy pilot from Seattle
SEATTLE — Watching the Blue Angels roar over Lake Washington was a rite of summer that would forever shape Patrick Sean Myrick.
Navy Lt. Myrick, 31, was killed last week along with three crew members when his S-3B Viking surveillance aircraft crashed into the island of Kita Iwo Jima in the Pacific Ocean during a training operation from the aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis.
Myrick’s mother, Margaret Myrick of Seattle, said the Navy’s Blue Angels fascinated her young son when they screamed across the Seattle sky during SeaFair, the city’s annual summer fair honoring its relationship with the ocean.
“He first started talking about being a Navy pilot when he was 12 or 13,” said Myrick’s mother, Margaret “Meg” Myrick of Seattle. “He was so proud and so excited to be flying, you could see it.”
Myrick graduated from Inglemoor High School in Kenmore in 1991, where he performed as the school’s mascot — a Viking. He graduated from the University of Washington with a degree in aeronautical and astronautical engineering.
Longtime friend Dustin Hubbard said he didn’t understand Myrick’s love for flying until he saw Myrick climb out of a jet at Boeing Field after a training flight from Florida.
“Here comes his training jet, and up pops the hood,” he recalled, “and down crawls Patrick looking like Tom Cruise in his flight suit with his oxygen mask hanging off his side.”
Myrick met his wife, Alli, in the Navy; she’s also a lieutenant.
“He loved all aspects of flying,” she said.
In 2001 Myrick received his Naval aviation wings in Meridian, Miss., and flew the S-3B Viking aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln and the Stennis. He made 325 carrier landings during his career and flew combat missions during Operation Iraqi Freedom.
The S-3B Viking is one of the largest planes that can land on aircraft carriers, and Myrick loved the challenge, said his wife, a public relations spokeswoman for the Navy.
After the Myricks married, they moved to San Diego. When on missions, Myrick would stay in contact with his wife via weekly phone calls and e-mail messages twice daily. He plastered his cabin with pictures of his wife and daughter, Julia Tatum, born six months ago.
Myrick’s last mission was part of routine joint training between the Stennis and the USS Kitty Hawk in the Western Pacific. The others who died in the crash last Tuesday were Lt. James Joseph Pupplo, 34; Lt. Cmdr. Scott Allen Zellem, 35; and Aviation Electronics Technician 2nd Class Joshua Brent Showalter, 24.
Myrick is survived by his wife and daughter, both of San Diego; his mother, of Seattle; a brother, Bryan Myrick, of Seattle; and his grandmother. He will be interred with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery.