Flight 22 - Surprise and fear (Hendersonville, NC 40 years ago today)

[Sequoia]

The boom startled Mac Brackett as he worked on a play at his grandparents' home on Lakewood Road.

I was writing and heard what sounded like a sonic boom," says Brackett, who was 18 then. "I kind of looked up. I just kind of dismissed it. But then, about 10 seconds later, there were two rapid booms again."

When he heard the second sound, Brackett stopped writing and ran through the house to the front porch. He spotted smoke rising in the air across U.S. 64. A tenant who rented one of the family's apartments walked up the drive, and Brackett asked her what happened. "This plane just went down," she said.

"I started taking off across the yard and down what's now Carolina Village Road," Brackett says. "Our next door neighbor came out and she asked what had happened. I said 'Well, I think a plane just crashed.' I paused for just a couple seconds, and then I started back running down the road again and just as I got down to where the Krispy Kreme is now, all this debris started just falling. Seats. A woman's pocket book. Bouncing off the ground."

http://www.hendersonvillenews.com/article/20070718/NEWS/70718011/1151/NEWS/Flight_22_Surprise_and_fear

May not mean much to a lot of you, but I was at the crash site and it was just awful. I even have old newspaper clippings from that day and submitted them and my story to the reporter when he was gathering testomonies for this article.