Memorial to Baldy crash rises again

MAT-SU — Nobody’s stealing a somber memorial to a decades-old military plane crash in the Talkeetna Mountains. Not again.

A new steel rectangle bolted and glued into granite marks the site where a U.S. Air Force KB-29 crashed on the windswept slopes of Bald Mountain Ridge in 1956, killing all eight airmen aboard.

Parts of the plane remain scattered across the tundra at about 4,200 feet up Baldy, the long ridge that flanks Wasilla to the north.

Years passed before the hard-to-access crash site received recognition. Then, in 2004, a group of four-wheeler enthusiasts, many of them active-duty military or military veterans, placed a memorial plaque on the plane’s wing. The members of Alaska Extreme Four Wheelers and 2 Broke 2 Play felt it was their duty to mark the place the men died in service of their country.

Then, in 2008, somebody stole the plaque. It’s never been found.

The family of co-pilot 2nd Lt. James “Jimmy” D. Dellinger saw that theft as a crime against his memory, said Dellinger’s daughter, Robin Sword. She was 6 months old when her father died. Now 55, she works as a nurse in Monroe, N.C., outside Charlotte.

“I really feel that was their last resting place,” Sword said last week by phone. “I felt that was grave robbing.”

The crash occurred on a snowy night the day after Christmas in the midst of the Cold War. The four-engine tanker took off from Elmendorf Air Force Base with a Georgia-based crew aboard en route to Fairbanks with a full load of fuel. It struck the mountain a few hundred feet from the top of the ridge, sending up a fireball visible for miles.

The official cause of the crash remains unclear, though some family members suspect engine trouble.

Dellinger’s family knew the clubs wanted to put another plaque up, but didn’t expect it would happen given the cost involved and the sour economy.

“I’m very surprised,” Sword said, a few days after learning about last Saturday’s trip up the mountain. “It just means a lot to know that strangers would put that much time and effort into something like that.”

After the plaque was stolen, the four-wheeler clubs immediately got to work getting another one to replace it.

“People were like, ‘We’ve got to get this replaced. We’ve got to get another one up there,’” said Brian Mitchell, 43, an Eagle River High School science teacher who helped lead the effort as a former president of the Extreme Four Wheelers. “Of course, there was the initial shock and anger over the whole disrespect to this war monument; … how could anybody be so cold and callous? Once that wore off, we wanted to erect one as soon as possible.”

Several years of fundraising and planning came together Saturday as a crew of volunteer four-wheeler enthusiasts lugged a replacement plaque to the remote crash site Saturday — 23 adults and six children from 10 months to 11 years old. The gang included members of three clubs: the Alaska Extreme Four Wheelers, 2 Broke 2 Play and a new club called Dirty Addictions.

They drove for two hours. Then they parked their rigs and walked a mile and a half.

One volunteer carried the plaque on his back. Extreme Four Wheelers club president Tyson Hillis — active-duty Air Force stationed at Elmendorf Air Force Base — carried a 70-pound pack that contained, among other things, a drill and nine batteries.

The group rededicated the plaque in a ceremony that included a prayer and some words from Sword.

The plaque weighs 30 pounds. It’s bolted onto a hunk of granite near the crash site, and further bonded to the rock with epoxy.

“It shouldn’t go anywhere now,” Mitchell said.

The groups are also working with Wasilla’s Museum of Alaska Transportation and Industry on an exhibit about the crash and its victims, he said. They hauled out a 200-pound propeller and aerial stabilizer for refueling boom to be displayed at the museum.

The clubs raised several thousand dollars as part of the memorial effort. The plaque was donated by Steelfab.

The memorial lists the names of the men who died that night on Baldy: 1st Lt. Thomas P. Patton; 1st Lt. Lionel E. Reid; 1st Lt. Luther G. Lamm; 2nd Lt. James D. Dellinger; MSgt. Otto D. McAdams; TSgt. Thurman C. Rainer; SSgt. John B. Plyant; and A2C William P. Hodgson.

Though more than 50 years in the past, the tragedy is still fresh for some. Dellinger’s daughter, Robin, said her mother, now 78, doesn’t talk much about the crash. The memories are too painful.

“She still says to this day, ‘He said he would always come back,’” Sword said.