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55th Year Remembrance Hike Brings Long Quest to a Close ~ A plaque, at last, to remember victims of '53 airliner plane crash
For more than five years, Half Moon Bay aviation buff Christopher O'Donnell has waged a lonely campaign to have a plaque erected at the site of San Mateo County's deadliest plane crash, its residue still scattered about the redwood-laced ravines after more than half a century. · This week, O'Donnell's efforts took a huge leap forward, as officials at the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District recommended installing the plaque at a trailhead off Skyline Boulevard that leads to the crash site. · " I'm still in shock," said the Australian-born O'Donnell, fascinated by the ill-fated flight of the passenger plane Resolution, which claimed the lives of all 19 people on board when it crashed in the fog on final approach to the San Francisco airport. " Five and a half years of being told by people to disappear, now welcomed with open arms " ... I'm beyond happy, I'm ecstatic!" ·
Administrators at the district, a government agency that acquires land for public open space from San Carlos to Los Gatos, had formally resisted the idea of erecting a marker on district property. But this week, the public affairs committee recommended that the full board approve the plaque. · " We're glad to honor the victims of the worst air disaster in San Mateo County history this way," district spokesman Rudy Jurgensen said Thursday. " We think it's a good solution that fulfills the wishes" of those hoping to acknowledge the victims as well as the guardians trying to protect the preserve.
GrantTischler, who had traveled from Australia in October to visit the site where his father, Bernard, had died in the crash, said the plaque's approval " means full closure for me." · " I think about my father every day and I know he's up there smiling to think that everything has finally come full circle," he said by phone from Queensland. · Perhaps more than anything, the news represents an exquisite vindication for O'Donnell, who has fought tirelessly to publicize the doomed British Commonwealth Pacific Airlines DC6 Flight 304 and those who lost their lives the morning of Oct. 29, 1953. · In a congratulatory e-mail, Tischler, who goes by the nickname " Chips," was so moved by the payoff for O'Donnell's dedication that he was unable to complete his thoughts.· · " On behalf of myself and all the Tischler family, thank you so much," he wrote. " I'm going to close now because I'm getting emotional and the tears are starting to flow. Cheers for now MATE. Chips."
Contact Patrick May at pmay@mercurynews.com or (408) 920-5689.-
55th Year Remembrance Hike October 29th, 2008 ~ Australian visits site of Peninsula plane crash to mourn dad he never knew
Rounding the elbow of a narrow mountain trail in San Mateo County on Wednesday morning, Grant Tischler caught a glimpse of the twisted aluminum in the ravine, dropped his hiking stick, then began to sob as he collapsed in the dirt. This was, after all, sacred ground. It was on this steep hillside that his dad, Bernard, died exactly 55 years ago when an Australian passenger plane named Resolution lost its way in the fog on final approach to the San Francisco Airport, smashing into the thick weave of redwood and blood-red madrone and killing all 19 on board. Investigators estimated that from the moment it hit the trees to its final point of impact, Flight 304 continued on for another seven seconds. " I'm counting seven seconds in my head, and it's an eternity," said Tischler, picking up a charred piece of the DC-6 from the scattered debris. " All of them " ... going through that. If the plane had been just a few hundred feet higher, I might still have my father with me today."
A troubling secret
He couldn't have known it at the time, but Grant Tischler's journey to this redwood sanctuary really began 65 years ago, in the southeastern corner of Australia where he was born in 1943. He never knew his biological father, Bernard. And he would only learn about him years after his dad had perished. Bernard Tischler was a sailor in the Australian navy who had come home on leave in 1942 after his ship was sunk at Guadalcanal. " That's when he and my mother got together and from that liaison,'' said Grant, " little ol' me was born." But the family refused to allow the 18-year-old girl to marry the sailor. His love denied, Bernard left to rejoin the war. And in 1948 when Grant was 5, he and his mother moved to the town of Mildura where she married Ray Carpenter, who quickly adopted the boy. " I grew up thinking Ray was my real dad," he said. " I had my suspicions as I got older, but nobody ever told me anything." Years later, Grant would learn about his biological father and how he " had come home after the war looking to get back with my mom. But by then, she was already married to someone else, and it was too late
Wednesday morning, Tischler arrived early at the trail head for a trek he hoped would lead not only to his father's resting place, but to some emotional resolution for a life tormented by secrets and suspicions. He had come from Australia just for this hike, and was joined by Christopher O'Donnell, an Australian-born aviation buff from Half Moon Bay who has waged a tireless campaign to place a granite memorial at the crash site. For decades, aviation sleuths and the occasional hiker have come here to pick through the debris of San Mateo County's worst aviation accident ever. One of its passengers was the renowned American pianist William Kapell, who was returning from a concert tour of Australia.
" I've got a plaque and I want to find a home for it," O'Donnell said. " But the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District which owns the land won't allow anything placed at the site. They just want us to go away."
Worse, said Tischler, his dad's family back home all assumed a plaque had been erected years ago. He didn't have the heart to tell them it wasn't so. But in a significant turnaround this week, district spokesman Rudy Jurgensen said " we're now willing to take another look at this, though we'd want to erect something that's more interpretive in nature in addition to a memorial. It's not a done deal, but we're looking at it." As they headed up the trail, two hours through a steep, winding thicket of towering redwoods and plunging gulleys, O'Donnell and Tischler were heartened. Perhaps there would soon be resolution for the son — and maybe some good news to take back to the people his father had left behind.
A wedding photo
Grant Tischler worked in the gas industry and raised two daughters. He was 38 when he stumbled upon the key to his true identity that everyone had kept from him so long. He was visiting his grandmother when he noticed a wedding photo of his mom and Ray Carpenter on the wall. He'd seen it before, but this time his eye caught something in the corner of the frame. " There was a small embossed logo of a photo studio," he said. " And lightly penciled in was 1948. I asked my grandmother, " Isn't this a photo of my mom and dad on their wedding day? " She said, 'Yeah.' " Well, this says 1948, but I was born in 1943. Is there anything you want to tell me?' " She hemmed and hawed, then she told me the story." The wartime leave. The grandfather's resistance to his daughter's marriage. The move to Mildura. And the decades of deception that followed. " Suddenly, all the pieces fell into place," Tischler said. " I had always realized I didn't look like anybody in the family, but I had just shrugged it off. But there were strange things that went on. I'd ring up home after I'd left, dad would chat a bit, then yell to my mom 'Alice, your son's on the phone.' Not 'our son,' but 'your son.' " Still, I kept my suspicions to myself." But the whole story had not been told — because his grandmother didn't know it.
One day, Grant took his mother aside. " I asked 'Is he alive?' and she said, 'No, he was killed in an airplane accident in America.' " But no one on her side of the family knew the specific details. Grant then asked: Was Bernard the man she had really wanted to marry? " She told me 'I've only loved two men in my life. Ray was one — and your father was the other.' "
A familiar face
Life for Grant Tischler would go on. But it was a life entangled in a snarl of loose ends. After Grant implored his mother for a photo of his father, she finally mailed him one she had hidden for years behind her wedding photo with Ray Carpenter, tucked away beneath her bed. Standing in the middle of the post office that day, Grant took one look at the picture and burst into tears. " I looked at my dad and realized, 'I've been shaving that same face for years. I just cried and cried.'" Yet that one lingering question tormented him: How had his father died? Grant tracked down his dad's sister, who gave him a press clipping about the crash. He found two half-brothers, from Bernard's eventual marriage to another woman. But beyond the weathered newspaper article, his father's death remained shrouded in mystery. " No one knew much about the plane crash at all, and so I sat on that for many, many years. That's part of the reason that I've had a lot of demons in my life." After his adoptive dad died in 2007, Grant changed his last name to Tischler. Then last November, a breakthrough: one of his brothers had come across O'Donnell's Web site, full of articles and photos about the doomed British Commonwealth Pacific Airlines flight. His father had been on his way to England to learn the travel agent business. Grant realized he had no choice — he had to come to America to finally find the father he never knew.
A distant drone
As he surveyed the rusting debris around him, Grant said, " I've come full circle, because I know in my own heart that dad would have wanted me to come up here and finally get closure. " He was only 31 when he died, and I think in the back of his mind he must have thought, 'I have a son out there somewhere, a son I can't contact.' And I think that hurt him. Just like it has hurt me." Sitting quietly beside the trail, Tischler slowly regained his composure. " I do feel a little more peace now, for me and for my dad. But I first had to see with my own eyes this place where he died." And in that place, just before noon, as a butterfly flitted above the Resolution's pockmarked skin of rust and rivets, the pin-drop silence was gently interrupted. It was the distant drone of an airplane, maybe coming in for a landing at San Francisco International Airport, maybe heading out over the Pacific. But it was impossible to know for sure.
Contact Patrick May at pmay@mercurynews.com or 408-920-5689.-
Resolution Committee Founding Member Tells the Tale for KPIX ~ March 20th, 2008
Planned airing of this segment is Monday evening at 7pm for viewer-popular " Eye on The Bay" , May 12th, 2008.
Note in picture of Christopher holding coat hanger....he simply scratched the soil behind him and extracted it there and then !!
Photo Credits: Patrick Sullivan-
Resolution Committee Has Eyes on October ~ January 2nd, 2008
- As we look towards the 55th anniversary of this solemn day in 2008, we are lifted by the news that the Tischler brothers, Mark and Grant (see below), will be visiting California in October to attend any ceremonies paying tribute to the Flight of the Resolution and remembering the passengers on board. The Resolution Committee has commenced exploratory talks on this subject and will update this site as the picture paints itself. Please return frequently for the latest news.
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Lightning Does Strike Twice ~ December 20th, 2007
- Just eight days after receiving a email from Mark Tischler, son of B.R. Tischler a passenger on board BCPA 304 (see news brief below), his brother Grant contacted Christopher and provided us with additional family history that is helping weave a personal insight into this historical event. We are deeply grateful to both brothers for sharing this information with the Committee as well as readers around the world. Thank you Mark and Grant.
Go the Readers section for the full text from Grant. -
Son of a Resolution Passenger Offers His Appreciation for Efforts Under Way ~ December 12th, 2007
- The reach and power of the Internet was front and center stage today as Christopher O'Donnell received an email from Mark Tischler, son of B.R. Tischler one of the passengers on board flight 304. He had discovered the Resolution Committee's web site at http://flightoftheresolution.org/ and contacted Christopher. Mark, who lives in Australia, was very appreciative that " there are people trying to pay tribute to those lost on this flight." He also wished us success, and we are invigorated by his encouragement and continue the task to secure an appropriate site for the plaque, history and artifacts.
You can read the full text of his correspondence at the Readers section of our site. -
Hiller Museum Decides to Forgo a Permanent 'Resolution Display ~ November 1st, 2007
- After 4 years of effort by the Resolution committee and the generous donation of the Memorial plaque by the Native Sons of the Golden West, Hiller Museum, the intended resting place for this piece of San Mateo history, has decided to not display the collected artifacts and plaque. They have determined that the historical importance of the Resolution will not be included in their on-going plans, and has advised Christopher of this unfortunate turn of events. The committee remains hopefully that an alternate local entity will step forward to sponsor an appropriate venue for this important part of aviation history.
We will keep you informed as we receive any news, and a thank you to all who have continued your support. -
Dedication of NSGW Memorial Plaque at Hiller Aviation Museum ~ October 29th, 2006
- Dedication of the granite plaque, sponsored by the Native Sons of the Golden West, was officiated on October 29th, 2006, the 53rd anniversary of the loss of " Resolution" VH-BPE, at Hiller Aviation Museum in San Carlos. The solemn occasion was attended by NSGW officers and representatives of the museum, 40 in all, that appreciated the tasteful etching of the 19 passengers and crew, soon to be incorporated in a display memorial at the museum.
Photo Credits: SFO- Greg Kingrey, Dedication- Linda Suffion -
Christopher O'Donnell Headline Speaker at Native Sons Dinner Update
- Christopher O'Donnell, founding member of the Flight of the Resolution Committee, was invited to make a presentation at the Native Sons of the Golden West's parlor in Napa, California. A sit down dinner for over 200 members and their families included a show & tell of the history of this event, and current efforts to establish a memorial commemoration. The highlight of his talk that evening was him producing an actual piece of the aircraft tail section retrieved form the crash site in San Mateo County of VH-BPE, the airliner assigned to that fateful flight almost 52 years ago.
From that evening, a decision was made by NSGW to place the Resolution Project under the " umbrella" of an arm of NSGW known as the " Historical Preservation Foundation" . NSGW feels that this project, their first under this banner, would be a wonderful start to a comprehensive master-planned approach to preserving the most valued relics of California's history. The support of this new foundation will generate increased awareness of the Resolution Committee's goal and should bring about the memorial dedication in a timely manner. -
Three Years of Efforts Finally Lifts Off and Lands ~ October 25th, 2006
Channel 7 requested an exclusive filming of the occasion and gave the subject four minutes of air time on the 6 o'clock news. " Reading the passengers and crew names on that runway was a moving moment for me, I can assure you!," said O'Donnell.
The piece of wreckage will be displayed as a key relic in the memorial to this catastrophe, which will be built at Hiller Aviation museum in 2007.-
Resolution Committee Decision on Wing Removal Update
- After a recent arduous hike on Kings Mountain, with representatives from Hiller museum and MROSD to inspect the remaining wing section of the Resolution, Christopher O'Donnell made a decision to respect the sanctity of the site by not removing this relic from its resting place. This was predicated on the obvious fact that its condition, after over 50 years exposure to the elements, was too delicate for one-piece removal and its remoteness, within the woods, would make such removal dangerous for recovery workers and damage the surrounding pristine environment. When further funds are available through donations to the Resolution project, helicopter extraction is a viable alternative but that would require numerous permits and monies not available to the committee at this time.
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Native Sons of the Golden West Meeting ~ November 20th, 2004
- Christopher O'Donnell will continue the Resolution Committee's task of creating an appropriate memorial for the Resolution at a meeting with the Native Sons of the West. This benevolent group has gracefully agreed to produce a granite plaque for the final memorial site. We are moving towards our ultimate goal, so keep browsing back and stay updated on our progress.
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MidPeninsula Open Space Open Space District Meeting ~ November 10th, 2004
- The next significant step in our efforts with the Resolution committee will occur when Christopher O'Donnell meets with the MidPeninsula Regional Open Space District. He will be discussing plans for a memorial dedicated to the memory of the crash of the Resolution, with the support of this important group. Stayed tuned for results and late breaking information.
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San Mateo County Times Online ~ Effort to memorialize County's worst air crash ~ October 25th, 2003
- By David Burger, STAFF WRITER
Article Last Updated: Saturday, October 25, 2003 - 3:10:26 AM PST
Fifty years ago this Wednesday the Resolution, an Australian Douglas DC-6, crashed into a fog-bound ridge eight miles southeast of Half Moon Bay, killing all 19 people on board.
Instead of officially mandated moments of silence, elaborate ceremonies or funereal eulogies, the only remembrance was a hike this morning into the wooded hills surrounding Kings Mountain, the site of the crash.
Christopher O'Donnell, of Half Moon Bay, will be on the strenuous, six-and-a-half-mile hike conducted by guides of the Mid-Peninsula Open Space District, but his journey will not stop at the end of the trail. His ultimate aim is to bring the event into the public's focus on a larger scale, something he calls " preservationism."
" I want to preserve the memories and the material of the worst aviation crash in the history of the County," he said. " This is my grand challenge, my grand quest."
O'Donnell is the founding member of the one-month-old Flight of the Resolution Memorial Fund (www.flightoftheresolution.org), a group of citizens who share his quest. They want to see a memorial erected on the disaster site. If that can't be accomplished, they would like for some memorabilia still remaining at the site to be placed in the Hiller Aviation Museum, located in San Carlos.
That looks like a longshot. Three weeks ago, the Mid-Peninsula Open Space District, which owns the land that includes the disaster site, rejected the group's request for either of those options on the grounds that it wants the land to remain pristine and untouched.
O'Donnell was disappointed, but not discouraged. " I'm an adventurer, so I have to take the good with the bad," he said.
O'Donnell's interest in the project was rekindled only recently, but has its roots in his Australian boyhood. As a child, he was a member of the Aviation Historical Society of Australia, and he traded photographs of planes with other children around the world. He left Australia in the sixties, and lost track of his pen pals and the society.
Then last year O'Donnell bought his first computer, which he soon used to re-establish contact with the society. He received an e-mail in early September from a member who had noticed O'Donnell's Half Moon Bay address.
The Resolution's crash was the first fatal overseas accident ever by an Australian plane, and had more notoriety down under than here in the United States. The e-mail's author asked O'Donnell one simple question: " Did the crash site have a plaque?"
O'Donnell quickly learned that it did not, and in the process he heard interesting stories related to the crash that he described as a " drug" that wouldn't let him go: The flight, from Honolulu to San Francisco, was only minutes from being completed the crash apparently happened because the pilot was over-confident in the morning fog and drove the plane straight into a mountain one of the passengers was the famed 31-year-old American pianist William Kapell three major forest fires were caused by the accident and, most important, that wreckage still remained at the crash site -- including most of one wing.
In the past month, O'Donnell enlisted other people in the community to help in his attempts to memorialize the event, including Dave Pine of Burlingame, who was attracted to the project mostly because of his interest in history, but also because of the founding member's personality. " Christopher is a very passionate person who cares deeply about this matter," he said. " He's a colorful and animated guy who got involved in such a dramatic story."
During today's hike, Pine and O'Donnell hope to get to know the guides from the district to see if there is a way the land owner can be persuaded to memorialize the site or to let the wreckage be transported to a local museum. Either way, O'Donnell sees this as just the beginning.
" I can't turn back now," he said. " This is a good thing to do." -
Half Moon Bay Review Article ~ 'Noble cause' rises from crash ~ October 15th, 2003
Back on Thursday, Oct. 29, 1953, at 8:43 a.m., life was quiet and routine on Kings Mountain. It was a community bursting with pride in its elementary school. And there, teachers might have been lecturing to a class, or the hush of study may have filled the school. But at 8:43, the day's schoolwork was shattered by a distant thud, an explosion, and then silence. Barely 90 minutes later, a Coast Guard team zeroed in on a column of smoke rising from a heavily wooded mountain ridge a mile south of the school.
Flash forward 50 years, and you come to the compulsive, determined quest of Australia native and Canada Cove resident Christopher O'Donnell, 60. Coming up on Oct. 29, 2003 is the 50th anniversary of San Mateo County's worst air disaster. And O'Donnell's quest is to set up a memorial to the 19 people who died in it.
" This is a noble thing to do," O'Donnell said. " I don't want these people forgotten."
The plane that went down that day was a 90,000-pound DC-6 - 100 feet long with a 117-foot wingspan. It was Flight 304/44 of British Commonwealth Pacific Airlines, an Australian airline founded in March 1946. Due to economic shifts in the highly competitive airline industry serving Australia, New Zealand and Britain, it was integrated into Qantas in 1954. The huge plane had everything, including sleeper accommodations, and it was one of four DC-6s purchased by the airline around 1950 and named after the four ships commanded by Capt. James Cook (1728-1779): the Resolution, Endeavor, Adventure and Discovery.
This was the Resolution. On the last leg of an uneventful Sydney-to-San Francisco flight, it was descending into San Francisco when it hit heavy coastal fog. Air controllers advised the veteran pilot, Capt. Bruce Dickson, to remain at least 500 feet above the " clouds." Well-acquainted with this route, Dickson might have ignored the directive. His last communication with the tower, at 8:40 a.m., was " southeast, turning inbound." Later, it was determined that the plane hit trees, which sheared off the wings, and then crashed headfirst into the mountain. All 11 passengers and eight crew members died on impact, and the resulting explosion and fire scattered wreckage far down the hill. The probable cause: " failure of the crew to follow prescribed procedures for an instrument approach."
Among the mostly-Australian passengers who died was a young polio victim traveling to America with his father to seek treatment. Also among them was handsome, gifted American virtuoso pianist William Kapell, 31. Known for his passionate, electrifying playing, Kapell was acknowledged as the leading American pianist of his day.
Now, O'Donnell is making sure the world knows of Kapell - and the 18 others who died with him. " This crash is well-known by many people and not well-known by just as many," he said flatly. He was one of those who knew. In his teens, he was an avid member of the Aviation Historical Society of Australia. He lost track of aviation in the course of other adventures. He came to America in 1964, worked as a salesman for major cosmetics companies. He went east to cross the country, took a ship to Europe, lived in Rome, drove to Moscow, saw Greece, spent a winter in the Sahara desert and came home in 1975.
Seeking new adventures he turned to photography, working for Kaufmann's Cameras Inc. in San Mateo and teaching that art to adults throughout the Park & Recreation system and night classes at the College of San Mateo. Other interests include headkeeper at Pigeon Point Light Station in Pescadero and docent at Hiller Aviation Insitute in San Carlos. When he got his first computer, " a world opened up by way of the Internet." Online, he tracked down his old aviation society. A member, seeing his Half Moon Bay address, asked about the Resolution - and " a major project took off," he said.
O'Donnell has made pilgrimages to Kings Mountain, hiking an hour along the wooded Resolution Trail to a sunny, exposed hillside still littered with sections of twisted and charred DC-6 wreckage.
" It looks like somebody dumped a car," O'Donnell said. Some pieces are as big as a car door. Others are as tiny as bolts. When O'Donnell speaks of them, his tone turns reverential. " I'm not sure yet what is driving me," he said. Perhaps it is a confrontation with the mortality in the crash. "Actually, this picked me up and gave me a new 'raison d'etre'. Life is full of adventure. This is another one."
To him, the quest is "a noble thing to do."
I've done a lot of good things and never had a title or a caption put to them," he said heartily. " I was thinking it was a noble thing to do. It's time good people stepped forward and said, 'This is a good thing to do, and watch me do it.'" Joined by a cadre of like-minded friends, O'Donnell approached the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District about placing a plaque at the site. Last week, the request was nixed. O'Donnell said he wasn't surprised. "They want to keep the land as pristine as possible" since it is used by hikers and meditation-seekers. "I'm up for that."
Despite the setback, he isn't up for letting the dream die. "I now have to finish it," he said. "If it was only one person, I could find a reason to stop. these guys are gung-ho. Halting is unfair to them. It's not right not to finish it." His next target is the Hiller Aviation Museum in San Carlos. "I've almost given up on the idea of a plaque physically on the mountain," he said. "I think Hiller will give it more public visibility." "I'm going to put up a plaque somewhere, even if it's in the bloody front of my own house."
O'Donnell said he will get in touch with the Kapell family to seek support, and attend an Oct. 29, Midpeninsula-led anniversary ceremony at the crash site. "My group and myself will be on that walk," he said. "We're serious about this - we're not a bunch of boys playing games."
Interested people can follow the unfolding memorial story - and help with donations - via his Web site, www.flightoftheresolution.org..-
Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District (MROSD) 50th Anniversary Resolution Hike ~ October 25th, 2003 El Corte de Madera Creek 9:00 am - 12:30 pm
- Join docents Denise Montlack and Paul Billig to respectfully learn about the events of San Mateo County's worst aviation disaster that occurred here 50 years ago. Many aspects of this beautiful preserve will be shared with you, including a unique geological formation called tafoni. This is a moderate hike of 6.5 miles along the Tafoni, Fir, Resolution, and El Corte de Madera Creek Trails, and includes one long uphill (about 400 feet over 0.7 miles) at the end of the hike. There will be brief breaks to snack along the way. Meet at Skeggs Point, a Caltrans vista point on the east side of Skyline Boulevard, about 4 miles north of La Honda Road (Highway 84) and 1.5 miles south of Kings Mountain Road. Please note that Caltrans prohibits a left turn into the lot when approaching from the north along Skyline Blvd.
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