Memories of 1957 plane crash over Pacoima Jr High (Ritchie Valens' alma mater)
deb...@comcast.net
Dennis McCarthy, Columnist
· Link: January 31, 1957 - Plane crash in Pacoima
The journey back to the morning of Jan. 31, 1957, began with a phone
call from retired nurse Mary Lewandowski, who wondered how to find out
what had happened to the two boys she'd spent four months caring for at
Sun Valley Hospital nearly 50 years earlier.
Their names were Albert Pardo and John Sain, she said. They were among
220 boys who were out on the Pacoima Junior High School playground for
gym class at 11:18 a.m. when two airplanes collided overhead.
A DC-7B with a crew of four and a two-man F-89J Scorpion jet fighter
collided at 25,000 feet, raining debris on the playground and nearby
Pacoima Congregational Church and thrusting the San Fernando Valley
community into the national headlines.
The radarman in the Scorpion bailed out, but the five other crew
members died, along with three boys on the ground - Ronnie Brann, 13,
and 12-year-olds Robert Zallan and Evan Elsner.
Seventy-four other children were hurt, suffering burns, broken bones
and internal injuries. One 13-year-old lost his leg.
Among the most critically hurt was Sain, who suffered
third-degree burnsover most of his body, and Pardo, who suffered
second-degree burns and a broken neck, jaw and shoulder.
"They put two boys in each hospital room, and I was given Albert and
John," Lewandowski said. "I spent four months on the 7 a.m.-to-7 p.m.
shift, caring for their wounds and feeding them.
"After they got better, we'd watch a little 13-inch, black-and-white TV
in the room, and they loved to tease me because I was 24 at the time
and not much older than they were."
She's 74 now, and the boys would be in their early 60s. They've been on
her mind a lot over the years, as she recalled one of the San Fernando
Valley's worst disasters.
"The last time I heard from them was about a year after they got out of
the hospital," Mary said. "I was getting married, and they sent me a
nice card.
"Albert had a brother who visited him every day - I think his name was
Alex. He was one of the kids on the playground, too."
Not a day has gone by in the last 50 years that he hasn't thought about
that morning - looking up at the sky and seeing chunks of fiery debris
coming right at him, Alex Pardo says.
"I ran one way and Albert ran the other," he said Thursday from his
home in Eagle Rock, minutes after calling Mary and giving her the sad
news that Albert died last year from kidney failure.
"The impact (of the falling debris) sent me flying through the air,"
Alex said. "I could feel the spray of gas and oil hitting my back. I
can still smell it.
"I went looking for my little brother, but I couldn't find him
anywhere. The coaches gathered us around, and we helped the injured
kids while waiting for the ambulances to arrive.
"I kept looking around for Albert, yelling his name. I found out later
he had already been taken to the hospital. He was burned pretty bad and
had a big gash on his mouth. Something had hit him in the back of the
head."
His younger brother recovered from his injuries and grew up to have a
good life, Alex told Mary. Albert got married and had two great kids
and a long career as a loan officer in the real estate business.
"I knew all the kids who were killed that day, and John Sain, too,"
Alex told her. "But I don't know what happened to John."
Nobody seems to know, says Joan Gushin, who'd stayed home from school
that day because she was sick. She lived less than a mile from her
junior high and happened to be looking out her bedroom window when the
planes plummeted to the ground before her disbelieving eyes.
A few years ago, Joan started a Web site -
http://angiejim.homestead.com/crash.html - in the hope of locating her
former classmates and finding out how the tragedy had affected their
lives.
"Most of us kept our emotions from that morning bottled up for years
because we were so traumatized," she said. "It wasn't spoken about
anywhere; that's why I wanted to open it up."
There have been no public memorials
of that tragic day - no ceremonies marking the anniversary of such a
significant day in Valley history.
In fact, the only knowledge most people have of the event is because of
"La Bamba," the 1987 biopic depicting the short life of rock 'n' roll
star Richie Valens, who in 1957 was a 15-year-old student at Pacoima
Junior High.
He was attending his grandfather's funeral the morning of the crash, so
was absent from school. But the campus was shown in the opening scenes
of the movie as a way to foreshadow Valens' death in a plane crash two
years later.
"John Sain was one of the kids who never responded to my Web site, so I
don't know what happened to him," Joan said. "But maybe my old
girlfriend from school, Merilyn Zallan, might know.
"She lost her younger brother, Bobby, that morning."
She was in the auditorium with the choir practicing the song "You'll
Never Walk Alone" for their upcoming graduation ceremony when there was
a loud bang outside, Merilyn recalled in a phone interview from her
home in Phoenix.
"My science teacher came running in and said there had been an accident
in the neighborhood, and we should all report to our homerooms.
"Unfortunately, my homeroom was in the gym, and there was all this
chaos going on, with everyone rushing around screaming and yelling.
"Bobby had been home with the flu for a week, and this was his first
day back at school. If only he had been sick one more day.
"I saw him at recess that morning, and waved at him as he walked to the
gym for his next class. It was the last time I saw my brother alive."
Amid all the confusion, she looked for her brother, getting a bad
feeling in the pit of her stomach when she couldn't find him, Merilyn
said.
"Pretty soon, one of the teachers tapped me on the shoulder and said I
should report to the principal's office and wait there.
"I spent three hours just sitting there without any word, then they had
one of the National Guard soldiers there drive me home.
"My grandfather was in the living room, wailing. The coroner's office
had just called. They needed someone to identify my brother's body."
No, Merilyn said, she did not know what happened to Johnny Sain or any
of her other classmates who were injured that morning.
"Our family was never the same after Bobby died. We moved out of the
Valley about a year later, and tried to forget that horrible day."
Alex Pardo met nurse Mary Lewandowski on Friday on the playground of
his old junior high school, handing her a few photos of his brother he
had brought along.
Mary smiled as she looked at pictures of Albert at his high school
prom, and as a young man standing with his father.
"I remember you and your father visiting Albert every day in the
hospital," she said, handing Alex back the photos.
"It would be nice to find John Sain now, but even if I don't, it's good
to know so many of his classmates from that day are finally finding
each other again.
"Life goes on, and 50 years is a long time. But no one who remembers
that day will ever forget it."
sden...@cox.net
> Valley tragedy's wounds remain
> Dennis McCarthy, Columnist
>
>
>
I remember as an adult watching La Bamba and it was filmed exactly as I remembered it. It freaked me out so much i couldn't sit through the movie. I did eventually see it through.
Once the planes had crashed my grandmother rushed me to the Junior High school where we witnessed the carnage on the playground. Later when we returned home there was plane fusilage in the front yard. The memories of that day 57 years later are still as clear as they happened yesterday.
I have shared the story a few times, but certainly not the terror and the impact it has on you forever.
I hope that everyone that was there that day has found a way to deal with it peacefully. God rest the sould that lost their lived that day.
Sheri Burch Denney
3pie...@gmail.com
> On Sunday, August 13, 2006 10:42:56 PM UTC-7, Obie wrote:
> > Valley tragedy's wounds remain
> > Dennis McCarthy, Columnist
> >
> >
> >
> > Hi there, I lived there when the plane crash happened. I was 6 at the time and lived on Garber Street and attended kindergarten at Hadden Avenue School during the 2nd half of the day. I was with my Grandmother that day leaving a store and on my way to school. She just started screaming the planes crashed, the planes crashed.
> I remember as an adult watching La Bamba and it was filmed exactly as I remembered it. It freaked me out so much i couldn't sit through the movie. I did eventually see it through.
> Once the planes had crashed my grandmother rushed me to the Junior High school where we witnessed the carnage on the playground. Later when we returned home there was plane fusilage in the front yard. The memories of that day 57 years later are still as clear as they happened yesterday.
> I have shared the story a few times, but certainly not the terror and the impact it has on you forever.
> I hope that everyone that was there that day has found a way to deal with it peacefully. God rest the sould that lost their lived that day.
>
> Sheri Burch Denney
> >
> >
stevela...@gmail.com
> Valley tragedy's wounds remain
> Dennis McCarthy, Columnist
>
To this day I can see those parts speed out and the fear and sadness that was spread throughout our community. I lived on O'Melveny Ave. near Tuxford. I am 68 years old now!
stevela...@gmail.com
> On Sunday, August 13, 2006 at 10:42:56 PM UTC-7, Obie wrote:
> > Valley tragedy's wounds remain
> > Dennis McCarthy, Columnist
a not Tacoma