Seekonk, Massachusetts – July 26, 1975

     Shortly before noon on the morning of July 26, 1975, a 52-year-old man from Cranston, R.I., was piloting his home-built BD-4 single-engine experimental aircraft over Seekonk when the engine began to run erratically.  According to one witnesses, it appeared that he was attempting to make an emergency landing on the first fairway at the Ledgemont Country Club, but after seeing that golfers were on the fairway, steered the craft towards the tenth fairway.  There the nose and one wing struck the turf and the plane flipped over and burst into flames.  Several caddies ran to assist, and dragged the mortally injured pilot out of the wreckage.   

     The pilot had taken off from North Central Airport in Smithfield, R.I., and was on his way to Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts, when the accident occurred.  He’d built the airplane at his home in Cranston in 1970. 

     Source:

     Providence Sunday Journal, Plane Crash In Seekonk Kills Pilot”, July 27, 1975.  (With photo of crash site.)