Pilots’ remains to be buried at Arlington

IDAHO FALLS – The remains of two Air Force pilots killed when their jet slammed into Mount Rainier in 1968 will be buried at Arlington National Cemetery today.

Lt. Col. Ivan O’Dell and Col. Wilfred Crutchfield died while flying from Mather Air Force Base in California to McChord Air Force Base in Washington state.

The wreckage of their T-33 trainer was found in October 2004 by hikers after it moved with a glacier down the side of the volcano from 10,900 feet to 6,700 feet.

Marjorie O’Dell, who has lived in Idaho Falls for 12 years, was contacted in November 2004 and told her husband’s remains had been found. She and her two daughters, Donna Woolstenhulme of Victor, Idaho, and Karen Thomas of Chicago, plan to attend the services at Arlington National Cemetery.

Marjorie and Ivan O’Dell were married 22 years.

“He was so good-natured,” she told the Post Register newspaper.

During his 26-year-career, Ivan O’Dell flew hundreds of missions in World War II, Korea and Vietnam. He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, the Bronze Star and Air Medal with 21 Oak Leaf Clusters.

“We were out (of the Air Force) for four years, and you never met a more unhappy man,” Marjorie O’Dell said. “He belonged to the Air Force.”

Investigation reports of the crash said that Crutchfield piloted the airplane, which had been handed off to air controllers in Seattle during its flight north. Marjorie O’Dell said that a friend later told her an inexperienced controller gave the pilots wrong directions and that Ivan O’Dell had radioed to say, “Your instructions do not correspond to my instruments,” before radio contact was lost.

Woolstenhulme was 12 when her father died, and she said the first emotion she felt after hearing her father’s body had been found was anger.

“For me, there was closure a long time ago,” she said. “It was all pretty confusing when I was 12. All the services they had then are kind of a blur.”

She said she’s nervous about old feelings returning at the ceremony at Arlington.

“I look at it as a great honor to my father, a culmination of his life,” she said.