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55 years ago today
Aug. 14th, 2013 07:01 pmMy uncle John, returning home from a business trip to Europe, boarded KLM Flight 607-E bound from Shannon, Ireland to Gander, Newfoundland. He and 98 others on the Super Constellation died when the plane crashed into the Atlantic Ocean shortly after take-off.
My parents brought me, then barely a year old, from Missouri, where we were then living, to my grandparents' house in Wellesley, where they got the news. I only got to know my uncle through his books and the wonderful machines my grandparents kept in his room, which they maintained as long as they lived. He was an inventor and tinkerer who ran a small plastics factory in Leominster, and the books in his room told fascinating tales of the rise of great industries, especially railroads. A great big brass scale steam locomotive stood in a glass case in his room for many years; it had been custom built by a man named George Whitney, an early steam automobile pioneer who was a good friend of my uncle's and lived to be more than a hundred years old.
For years afterward my mother would never get on a plane. The long cross-country train trips we took when I was little left me with a passionate love of trains and train travel.
My parents brought me, then barely a year old, from Missouri, where we were then living, to my grandparents' house in Wellesley, where they got the news. I only got to know my uncle through his books and the wonderful machines my grandparents kept in his room, which they maintained as long as they lived. He was an inventor and tinkerer who ran a small plastics factory in Leominster, and the books in his room told fascinating tales of the rise of great industries, especially railroads. A great big brass scale steam locomotive stood in a glass case in his room for many years; it had been custom built by a man named George Whitney, an early steam automobile pioneer who was a good friend of my uncle's and lived to be more than a hundred years old.
For years afterward my mother would never get on a plane. The long cross-country train trips we took when I was little left me with a passionate love of trains and train travel.
