Honoring a football legend: Event at site of 1931 crash

The spirit of college football changed within a heartbeat on the morning of March 31, 1931. That's when a TWA Fokker F-10A carrying Notre Dame coach Knute Rockne, along with two crew members and five passengers, crashed into a hill near Bazaar in Chase County.

Now, 80 years later, fans of Rockne and family members of the victims plan to gather Saturday at the crash site, located deep within the Flint Hills, for a memorial observation.

Guided tours will take people to the site of the wreckage, where a marble-and-limestone monument stands.

This year's memorial will not only honor the victims of the crash but Easter Heathman, the unofficial caretaker of the site for decades. Heathman, who lived near Matfield Green, died in January 2008 at age 90.

He was an eyewitness to the crash and for years made sure tiny wooden crosses were in good repair and wreaths were in place to honor the eight victims of the crash.

"We do this out of a love for Notre Dame. It is a love for Knute Rockne," said Pat Reis of Minneapolis, Minn., one of the committee members who helped organize this year's anniversary commemoration.

Reis admits it may, to some, seem odd to commemorate the crash site.

"It is a small part of Elvis and Graceland, but it is also out of a genuine spiritual connection and respect for Rockne and what he meant to Notre Dame," Reis said. "It may seem odd to go to where a tragic event occurred, but it is also a place where significant events turned that tragedy into something that was positive."

The crash, which was front-page news across the country, became a rallying point for Catholics nationwide to become more passionate with their connection to Notre Dame, Reis said.

It also prompted several changes with the safety operations of both TWA and the Aeronautics Branch of the U.S. Department of Commerce, now the Federal Aviation Administration.

Reis, a 1985 graduate of Notre Dame, first went to the crash site in 1991. He said he was touched by the beauty of the Flint Hills and by Heathman, who told him all about what he remembered from that fateful day.

"That young boy then, who had never heard of Notre Dame or Rockne, made it his life's work to allow the alumni and fans to come and pay their respects," Reis said. "He cared for it and protected it."

As in previous years, tourists, fans and family members of the famous Notre Dame coach will first gather during the morning hours at the old schoolhouse in Bazaar, 6 1/2 miles south of Cottonwood Falls and 8 miles north of Matfield Green on K-177.

"We'd love to have as many people who can come and pay their respects," Reis said.

Crash witnesses

Throughout the last decades of his life, Heathman carried a business card that showed a plane flying into the gray shadows of 1-9-3-1. And written in the shadows were the words, "A witness of the Knute Rockne crash."

The accident happened at 10:37 a.m. that day.

Heathman, then 13, had been shelling corn in the kitchen with two of his five brothers. He had just walked out to the barn for another sack of corn when he heard an engine racing in the distance.

He thought it was cars drag racing.

Moments later, the family's phone rang. The caller was Heathman's uncle saying a plane had crashed in a nearby pasture.

The red and silver plane had crashed upside down. The tail was sticking almost straight up. Mail bags were strewn across the prairie and about three-eighths of a mile from the fuselage was the right wing.

Most of the victims were thrown from the wreckage, almost in a straight row. The pilot and co-pilot were found in the wreckage of the plane.

Within minutes, neighbors from nearby farms and ambulances arrived from Cottonwood Falls; the sheriff and doctor also came.

As the bodies were picked up one by one, Heathman noticed a bandage dragging from the leg of one of the bodies being carried on a stretcher. He reached down and placed it on the stretcher. It was Knute Rockne.

He never forgot that moment.

"I once asked a doctor, 'How come I can remember it so well — remember it like it was yesterday?' " Heathman told an Eagle reporter in March 2001. "He said it was because I was so young and had received a traumatic shock. He said, 'You will remember it as long as you live.'

"And, I tell you, I remember the smell of the gasoline and hot oil like it had just happened."

Tending the site

In 2007, Notre Dame invited an 88-year-old Heathman to the campus in South Bend, Ind., where he received an honorary monogram for his dedication in preserving the Rockne crash site, an award given to only select few (Pope John Paul II was so honored in 1979.)

It was an incredible honor for a Kansas farmer who never had the chance to attend college, said his daughter, Sue Ann Brown.

This year, tours of the crash site will be from 9 to 10:15 a.m. Saturday. The program starts at 10:30 a.m.

"I've been to the Flint Hills several times and made a special connection to Easter Heathman," Reis said. "From that friendship and meeting his family, I wanted to give back more and make sure this site and date are commemorated every five years."

In case of bad weather or muddy pastures, the memorial service may be changed to the schoolhouse. Contact the Chase County Chamber of Commerce at 620-273-8469, or the Chase County Historical Society Museum at 620-273-8500 for a recording of location change.

Lunch will be available at the Bazaar schoolhouse after everyone returns from the site at noon. Cost is $8. The observation also includes a showing of the ESPN Classic, "SportsCenter Flashback: The Death of Knute Rockne."

Heathman's children, Brown and Tom Heathman, have now taken over the responsibility of showing the crash site to visitors.

"We've heard the stories so many times, we know it by heart," Brown said. "It won't be the same for visitors who come now, you don't get to hear the stories firsthand from Easter. But the landowner has given us permission to do this."

Brown, who lives in Emporia, said it is her and her husband's intention to retire on the farmstead where Heathman lived.

"So we can be sitting on the porch when a carload pulls up and someone says, 'Hey, can you tell me how to get to the monument?'

"And we'll load up and take them."

This story was originally published March 27, 2011 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Honoring a football legend: Event at site of 1931 crash."