The crash of Flight 242 at New Hope was the first crash in Georgia involving a scheduled airline flight since 1941, and had the most fatalities regarding a crash within the state boundaries.
By Lisa Cooper
I grew up about three miles from the runways of Hartsfield, so it’s rather an understatement for me to say that the airplanes flew low over my childhood home or that I did hear airplane noise as I watched my favorite cartoons.
We lived under a major landing pattern. The planes were so low my mother would joke that the pilots could get a glimpse of her through the window in her “gown-tail” washing the breakfast dishes at the sink.
Yes, the planes flew close – and they were loud – and from time to time I played the “what if” game.
What if a plane got into some trouble and crashed into our house? If could happen – it was a possibility, and after the events of Monday, April 4, 1977 it was even more of a real possibility.
During the spring of 1977 I had other things on my mind. I had recently transferred to a new school and suddenly found myself covered with several hours of homework each afternoon.
Another concern was the weather. It had been a busy storm season, and Monday, April 5, 1977 was no different.
You know the drill….wave after wave of winds, rain, lightning and hail. In fact, during the last week of March, 1977 Douglas County had had so much rain the folks here experienced severe flooding.
The afternoon of Monday, April 5, 1977 started off normally enough. I had arrived home around 4 p.m. lugging several thick textbooks and bulging notebooks and had just settled down to my afternoon of assignments when a “special report” broken into the television show I was watching.
It was 4:20 p.m. – and while my afternoon was about to be taken up with something much more dramatic than homework there were folks forty-five minutes from me experiencing life and death. For those who survived or witnessed the events and the aftermath in Paulding and Douglas Counties their lives would be forever altered.
One of my worst fears had come true – for them.
Read more here: http://dallas-hiram.patch.com
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