After 50 years, Continental Flight 11 crash being memorialized

As the Continental Air Lines Boeing 707 lifted off the runway of Chicago’s O’Hare Airport on May 22, 1962, for the one-hour flight to Kansas City, perhaps no one aboard Flight 11 was more ecstatic than Dale Horn.

And why shouldn’t he be?

The 29-year-old businessman had flown to the Windy City the day before as superintendent of operations of Emery Air Freight Corps in Kansas City. Now he was returning as manager of Emery’s Chicago office.

Soon the exuberant father of two children – Kevin, 3, and Jo-Ellen, 20 months – would be embracing his wife Joanne in their Independence home and breaking the good news.

Dale, though, never had the chance to share his excitement about his promotion with Joanne or anyone else. He never made it home. Less than 30 minutes from its destination, Flight 11 plummeted from the night sky near Unionville, in north-central Missouri, killing all 37 passengers and the crew of eight.

Another Independence victim was Jean Farley, district sales manager of Luzier Cosmetics Inc., who was on a buying trip for the Kansas City company.

In our interview, Joanne gave me a copy of the Civil Aeronautics Board’s aircraft accident report stating the “probable cause of this accident was the disintegrating force of a dynamite explosion which occurred on the right rear lavatory, resulting in destruction of the aircraft.”

In its synopsis, the board said the explosion, which occurred at approximately 9:17 p.m., caused the tail section to separate from the fuselage. The aircraft broke up and the main part of the fuselage struck the ground about 6 miles north-northwest of Unionville.

In observance of the 50th anniversary of the Continental Airlines crash, family members of the deceased on Flight 11 will gather in Unionville, near the Iowa border, for a reunion.

But not on the actual date of the disaster. This year, May 22 falls on a weekday, so the event will be on Saturday, May 25, so more people can attend, including Joanne and 11 family members.

“It’s going to be a wonderful weekend ... and I am looking forward to it,” says Joanne, a lifelong Independence resident. “I am not regretting anything. … I know (Dale) was happy when he died because he knew he had the job, and that made me so happy to know he had gotten the job. That was his dream to have his own office.”

The reunion officially begins at 11 a.m. on the town square where Joanne’s daughter, Jo-Ellen, and another woman will read the names of all the victims etched on a 3-foot high granite monument. Attached to the top of the memorial is a replica of the Boeing 707.

There is one exception, though. The suicide bomber’s name will not be read.

“It’s going to be a happy day for me (to hear Dale’s name read), because I am so proud of him. And he deserves this (honor),” says Joanne, a 1951 graduate of William Chrisman High School.

Following lunch at the Methodist church just off the square, a tour of the crash site is planned. But unless Joanne changes her mind, she’s opting not to go with the rest of her family.

“I don’t think I can handle it,” she says.

The reunion ends that evening in nearby Centerville, Iowa, with dinner and dancing.

It’s been half a century since Joanne’s life was turned upside down, but she remembers well that fateful day so many years ago. Wanting to surprise her husband, she worked frantically all day painting the rooms of her children. Exhausted, she retired to bed early, only to be awakened by a ringing telephone around 10:30 p.m.

On the other end of the line was her husband’s boss informing her that Dale’s plane had crashed. That’s all he knew, he told her.

It wasn’t until the next morning that Joanne learned Dale’s fate. Another telephone call from Dale’s boss informed her that her husband perished on the plane with all the others.

Surrounded by family members, Joanne held up well and didn’t go to pieces over Dale’s demise, she recalls, unlike some family members whom she had to console. But during the visitation at the funeral home, Joanne broke down for the first time.

“I just crashed,” she says, recalling she asked her sister, Mary Ann Bloomquist, to take her home so she could grieve privately. Dales is buried in Mount Washington Cemetery.

For Joanne and Dale, their world 50 years ago was a “rosy” one.

“We had just bought a new brick home and we had a new car,” she says, noting the car wasn’t exactly brand new, but it was new to them.

They also had a boy and a girl – just what they wanted  and Dale had the job he wanted.

“I mean to tell you, we had the world by the tail. Then all of that ended.”

Joanne says she lived on the Social Security she received for herself and her two children, as well as on the insurance settlement she received from Emery Air Freight, because her husband died while on duty.

“So I lived comfortable on that and I never had to go to work.”

Although deeply in love with Dale, she opted to remarry after her son, Kevin – on being told his father had gone to heaven to be with Jesus – said, “Will you get me another daddy?”

“It just broke my heart,” she says.

So five years later Joanne married her brother in-law, Kenneth Horn, who passed away last year.

For Kevin, Kenneth was a perfect a match.

“Kevin just worshiped him.”

Joanne and Dale worshiped each other, too. They were both the same age.

Says Joanne: “We were perfect. We got along so well together. Never a raised voice. Never an argument. It was absolutely a binding marriage.”

How would things be like today if Dale’s life hadn’t been cut short?

“I think he would have gone higher in his job and (might) have been shipped back to Kansas City. But I don’t know whether I could have been away from my family that much,” she replies, recalling that after Dale’s death she had a terrible time with her nerves and often spent the night with her mom, Opal Doutt, or her sister.

Joanne isn’t sure she could have adjusted to being away from home. However, she says, “I might have been able to make it with Dale with me.”