Peyton Guest at the graveside marker of Herman Balderson.
A hand waving from a Piper Cub airplane window formed a lasting memory for Peyton Guest.
At the age of 12, he saw the yellow Piper Cub plane flying low overhead where he was shelling corn by hand. He had been given the task of shelling enough corn to make a trip to the mill near his home outside of Tappahannock.
According to Guest, the plane was flying very low and slowly. He could see the people in the plane and the person in the back seat would wave back to him as he jumped up and down waving his arms at the plane.
It was an unusual sight to see small aircraft flying in 1943. World War II was happening and any airplanes that were not being used by or for the government of the United States had to have their engines removed. It was a safety measure to prevent any foreign agents from stealing the plane and doing damage to the USA.
Guest knew he had best finish his task before lunch and got busy shelling the corn as the plane circled slowly around, as if the passengers were possibly sightseeing the area.
During lunch with his mother, sister and a neighbor, Alvin Pitts, they heard a loud, strange noise from the direction of the Rappahannock River. Not knowing what it was, they continued with their plans of taking the corn to the mill.
On the way home from the mill, they went through an area called “cottage row” and met Sydney McKendrie walking home.
Guest recalled that McKendrie looked as if he had seen a ghost.
It was then that they found out about the crash of the piper cub. The plane had crashed close to McKendrie’s boat.
McKendrie witnessed the fatal plunge of the aircraft, noting that it had circled the area many times before it plunged into the Rappahannock River at full throttle.
Robert Pitts’ boat was the first to reach the wreckage. He pulled it with grappling hooks to the railway on his brother’s property near Bowler’s Wharf.
Herman Balderson, 31, and Mabel Conley, 22, were found dead in the plane.
According to Guest, the FAA came and took the…
—See the full story in the November 5 edition of the Northern Neck News!
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