A Marine student pilot is healing from jet crash burns, and Fort Worth is sending love
A piece of our hearts will be with a family in a San Antonio hospital this Veterans Day.
That’s where the young Marine student pilot badly burned in a Sept. 19 Lake Worth training jet crash is settled in for a slow recovery.
The student from Naval Air Station Kingsville was transferred to the burn center at Brooke Army Medical Center Oct. 27. He had spent nearly 40 days in a Dallas hospital with severe back and leg burns.
His instructor ejected them both as the T-45C Goshawk crashed in residential back yards off Tejas Trail. But the student parachuted to a fiery landing suspended in power lines near Texas 199 north of the runway at Naval Air Station Fort Worth.
“Once he recovers, I don’t think there’ll be any stopping him from flying again,” said Anne Pottinger of the Fort Worth Airpower Council, which led one of several local charity efforts.
“From what I hear, he’s determined.”
From the moment the yet-unnamed student pilot crashed, Lake Worth and Fort Worth residents rushed to help.
Instead of grabbing for smartphones and cameras, off-duty firefighters and police grabbed for fire extinguishers from nearby Olé Donut and pulled the pilot off the wires by a parachute cord.
For the next month, Fort Worth residents sent donations and gifts from a city where the sound of military planes fills the sky with the “sound of freedom.”
“He is so young, and so many of us had family members in similar situations — we wanted to do what we could to help,” Pottinger said.
The Airpower Council will include the Marine in its Christmas charity giving, she said.
The Aledo-based Hugs from Hercs Foundation helped arrange meals, and the Nevada-based Wingman Foundation set up a Dallas apartment for his family and Kingsville household.
Both Fort Worth and Dallas restaurants sent high-protein meals as the pilot underwent a series of skin grafts.
“We sent them kolaches, hot dogs, breakfast sandwiches — really anything they wanted,” said Wade Chappell of Pearl Snap Kolaches. He organized restaurants including Bonnell’s, Lettuce Cook, Reata and Tokyo Cafe to feed a Marine family.
The pilot needed high calories and protein — “You just don’t get that in hospital food.” Chappell said.
“This touched everybody’s heart. Fort Worth has always been a defense town.”
The cause of the crash officially remains under investigation. The pilots’ friends have said they described a bird strike.
The instructor, a veteran aviator, parachuted down separately and was treated and released that day.
Julie O’Kelly, wife of NAS Kingsville Commanding Officer Cmdr. Nathan O’Kelly, has helped coordinate charity efforts.
(To send a get-well card, write: Brooke Army Medical Center, Attn: Gift Coordinator/Jutta (NAS Kingsville Pilot), 3551 Roger Brooke Drive, Fort Sam Houston TX 78234.)
The student pilot is now in daily rehab in San Antonio but living in residential quarters near the hospital, she said.
His rescue and recovery were “just incredible,” she said — “People in Fort Worth have been helping from the very beginning.”
We want him flying again for America.
This story was originally published October 30, 2021 at 5:45 AM.
