Ceremony to honor crash victims
WHITEFISH, Mont. — A ceremony is planned here Sunday for the five people aboard a Forest Service contract plane that crashed, killing three but sparing the lives of two who then walked through the wilderness.
“It’s a remembrance of all the people who perished,” said Mike Oliver, incident command officer. “It’ll also be a celebration of the survival of the two.”
Ann Bartuska, the U.S. Forest Service’s deputy chief of research in Washington, D.C., is scheduled to attend, along with the agency’s honor guard.
Forest Service employees Ken Good, 58, and Davita Bryant, 32, of Whitefish, and contract pilot Jim Long, 60, of Kalispell, died in the crash.
Employees Jodee Hogg, 23, of Billings, and Matthew Ramige, 29, of Jackson, Wyo., hiked three miles from the crash site to a highway on Wednesday afternoon. Hogg is hospitalized in Kalispell. Ramige is being treated at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle for a spinal fracture and burns.
The service is scheduled for 4 p.m. at the Whitefish High School gymnasium.
Good was an electronics technician with the Forest Service for the past 34 years and transferred to the Flathead National Forest in 1976.
“Ken was looking forward to his well deserved retirement this winter,” according to an obituary prepared by his family. “Ken was devoted to his family first; his job second and had an insatiable passion for his hobbies — trains and photography.”
Bryant was a crew leader for the U.S. Forest Service’s Forestry Inventory and Analysis program.
A friend, Sharie McKibben, said Bryant was considering other job possibilities and told McKibben Monday before the flight that this might be her last season with Forest Inventory and Analysis.
“The most positive outlook on life and people — that’s probably the most outstanding thing about her,” said McKibben, who met Bryant and her husband, Brian, three years ago while working in Arizona. Brian Bryant works on the same forest inventory project.
Long, the pilot, was a wing leader for Angel Flight, a program in which private pilots fly sick children to destinations in the Northwest. For at least five years, Long provided flights for many children participating in the Eagle Mount program, which provides therapeutic recreation for children with cancer.
“He did a ton for Angel Flight,” said Jill Holder, who works for Eagle Mount. “We bring kids in from a 500-mile radius. A lot of times we didn’t have pilots available and he would always come to the rescue.”
Long also was active in the Civil Air Patrol, served on the Glacier Park International Airport’s board of directors and was a flight instructor.
Long had retired as vice president of a chemical technology company and started working as a pilot for Edwards Jet Center at the beginning of the summer, said Jim Thomas, the Kalispell manager for Edwards.