07-05-2025
Memories, legacy of 1981 Walkersville plane crash live on
For Vincent Gratch, coming to the memorial in Walkersville's Heritage Farm Park brings back powerful memories.
He was only 12 when his older brother Charlie died on May 6, 1981, in the crash of an Air Force EC-135 surveillance plane in a field near the town.
Charlie graduated from the Air Force Academy in 1978, and was serving as a mission coordinator on the flight, Gratch said.
Their uncle was a colonel in the Air Force, and Charlie had wanted to be in the Air Force since he was a teenager, he said.
Gratch was one of nearly two dozen people who attended an annual service at the memorial on the 44th anniversary of the crash Tuesday.
Being at the scene of the crash makes him feel a connection to his brother, he said.
'I feel like I'm at peace here,' he said.
Jessica Lassetter was almost 2 when her father, Capt. Thomas Bayliss, was killed in the crash.
She doesn't have any memories of her father. Coming to the site is hard, she said.
But the anniversary ceremonies remind her that it was not just her family who was impacted by the event.
'It feels like part of a community,' she said.
The plane was on a training flight out of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio.
The U.S. Air Force Advanced Range Instrumentation Aircraft (ARIA) program that the plane was a part of was designed to support the Apollo space program, and was later reassigned to track various types of missile tests.
The flights usually took four to five hours, and would often follow a flight path from the base in Ohio to the Washington area and back, said Jeff Bressler, a former master sergeant who served in the ARIA program.
Bressler had been scheduled to be on the training flight, but was switched to a different assignment the day before.
He was on the flight line at Wright-Patterson when news came of the crash.
'It didn't strike me [at first] as our plane,' he said.
The base command quickly closed the flight line and called everyone into a meeting to share the news of what happened, he said.
Bressler said Tuesday was the second time he attended a ceremony at the Walkersville site, but he attended similar events in Dayton many times.
The crash shocked the base community, but also served as a source of bonding and support, said Bob Beach, a friend of Charlie Gratch, whose desk was next to his.
The wives of the families on the base quickly donated a grove of 21 trees to honor those who died, he said.
Among the 21 people on the plane were two wives of crew members, Peggy Emilio and Linda Fonke, part of an Air Force program for families to get a better understanding of what their family members did on the job.
The program came to an end after the Walkersville crash, Beach said.
Vincent Gratch said it is special to see so many people continue to honor the memories of the 21 victims of the crash.
'That accident touched them all,' he said.
