This day in history: ‘Man in the Sky,’ well-known Spokane pilot, dies in Montana plane crash. Reardan fire destroys businesses

From 1976: Roy Shreck, a well-known pilot from his decades in Spokane, died in a plane crash near Silesia, Montana.

He was piloting a plane from Cody, Wyoming, to Billings with a Cody family aboard.

Donald and Dorothy Loos died in the crash, but their 9-year-old daughter Angie survived after being pinned in the wreckage for 26 hours. She was in stable condition at a Billings hospital.

Shreck was an important figure in Spokane’s aviation history, and was nicknamed “The Man in the Sky” by Spokane newspapers. He was a student of Spokane air pioneer Nick Mamer, and became the co-owner of the Mamer-Shreck Air Transport Co. in the 1930s.

In 1939, he crashed a weather observation biplane near Coeur d’Alene during a heavy snowstorm. Rescuers on skis and in the air searched in vain for four days. Shreck was finally able to find his way to a farmhouse and call authorities.

Shreck left Spokane in the 1960s.

From 1926: Fires were raging around the region. In Reardan, a fire in the business district destroyed the Inland Hotel, a general store and a drug store.

“Amy Shipman, telephone operator, asleep in her mother’s hotel, was awakened and saw the fire and in her night clothes rushed to the telephone office a block away, awoke the boy who remains there at night, and gave the alarm,” the Spokane Chronicle wrote.

Authorities were suspicious about the cause of the fire, because it was the second time in 10 days that a fire had started in the Bowie Building, adjacent to the hotel.

Most of the fires in the region were forest fires, and even the wild animals were fleeing in terror. Four deer rushed into the water at Priest Lake “and stopped behind the pumps which were running full blast – they showed no fear of the pumps and stood there, trembling while they watched the fire leaping through the trees.”

One firefighter said he was fighting the fire near Kalispell Bay when a skunk “dashed from the brush and took shelter” at the man’s feet.

“Mr. Hunt stepped back and turned his hose on the animal,” said the Chronicle. “it appeared grateful, he said, and lay supinely in a puddle of water.”