SWEETWATER, ILL., AUG. 15 — A private passenger plan carrying a farm family to Springfield for “Flying Farmers” Day at the Illinois State Fair crashed and burned in a fog-covered soybean field yesterday, killing all five occupants.
The five-passenger Stinson plane, which took off from Monmouth airport about 7:30 a.m., crashed two hours later on the farm of John Ridge, 25 miles north of Springfield.
Sheriff Edgar T. Drayson of Monmouth identified the dead as Russell F. Jones, 63; his wife, Edna, 55; their two children, Ivan, 18, and Elizabeth, 16, and a granddaughter, Judy Rose Ricketts, 8. The Jones farm is eight miles northwest of Monmouth.
Ridge said the plane circled low over his farm for five minutes but that it did not appear at that time to be in any difficulty. The plane nosed into a dive, disappeared in a patch of fog and plunged to earth, he said. All the bodies were thrown clear of the wreckage.
Current Obituaries in the Astoria South Fulton Argus