Plane Crash
Rockne died in a plane crash in Kansas on March 31, 1931, while en route to participate in the production of the film The Spirit of Notre Dame. Shortly after taking off from Kansas City, where he had stopped to visit his two sons, Bill and Knute Jr., who were in boarding school there at the Pembroke-Country Day School, one of the Fokker Trimotor aircraft's wings separated in flight. The plane crashed into a wheat field near Bazaar, Kansas, killing Rockne and seven others. President Herbert Hoover called Rockne's death "a national loss." A personal envoy represented King Haakon VII of Norway at Rockne's funeral.
On the spot where the plane crashed, a memorial dedicated to the victims stands surrounded by a wire fence with wooden posts; it was maintained for many years by James Easter Heathman, who, at age thirteen in 1931, was one of the first people to arrive at the site of the tragedy.
Rockne was buried in Highland Cemetery in South Bend.
Read more about this topic: Knute Rockne
Famous quotes containing the words plane and/or crash:
“In time the scouring of wind and rain will wear down the ranges and plane off the region until it has the drab monotony of the older deserts. In the meantime—a two-million-year meantime—travelers may enjoy the cruel beauties of a desert in its youth,....”
—For the State of California, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“Crash on crash of the sea,
straining to wreck men, sea-boards, continents,
raging against the world, furious.”
—Hilda Doolittle (1886–1961)