In 1932, the Cumberland Times-News reported on the funerals of the victims of a Sunday airplane crash as follows:
The funeral of Mrs. Kathleen Treiber, 25 years old, of 14 North Chase Street, who with Franklin G. Ankeney, 32, of LaVale, were instantly killed shortly after 2 pm Sunday afternoon, September 4th, in an airplane crash near Mexico Farms Flying Field. The condition of Chester Everline, 26, of the City of Cumberland, who piloted the plane, is a patient at Memorial Hospital, with fractures of the legs and arms, bruises and contusions about the head, was reported as improved today. Everline is an automobile salesman and a student pilot. The accident occurred shortly after the trio took off from Mexico Farms airport in a biplane piloted by Everline. Other pilots at the airport said Everline, with the two passengers in the front cockpit, tried too steep a bank at takeoff and lost flying speed and went into a tailspin. The airplane reached a height estimated at nearly 500 feet. They crashed on the farm of Frank Dolly, about a fourth of a mile from the flying field. The couple, both dead at the crash site, were interested in flying, had driven to the field and met Everline a few minutes before to inspect a new plane and try it out. Everline was found conscious with a fractured shoulder and ankle and bruises and cuts about the body. The plane was badly wrecked and several thousand people were attracted to the vicinity of the flying field in the afternoon of Sunday until dusk. Souvenir hunters tore off strips of cloth from the wings of the plane. Everline, it is stated, was making only his third flight as a pilot with passengers and was a student pilot. Local pilots said he had not received a Federal License to transport passengers. Ankeney, who was an aviation enthusiast, had planned to become an aviator, had made a number of flights this summer as a passenger. The biplane, a Fairchild KR34 arrived here Sunday from the Fairchild Factory in Hagerstown, to be put into operation in the Airgo Flying Service, in which Ankeney was interested. Ankeney and Miss Treiber decided to go up in the afternoon after a test flight of the plane had been made in the morning by William Johnson, a local licensed pilot. The plane was in perfect condition, Johnson said. Several who saw the plane appear to be in difficulty and descending rapidly, notified Johnson, who was on the field and Johnson obtained another plane from a nearby hanger and flew toward the Dolly farm and located the wrecked plane. He returned to the field and led a party to the scene. Both Everline and Ankeney, it is stated, were interested in the ownership of the airplane. The engine and other parts were salvaged by Robert Definbaugh, an aviation mechanic, yesterday. An inspector from the aviation section of the Federal Dept. of Commerce was expected here today to investigate the crash. The machine had dual controls, and Everline is reported by friends who visited the hospital to have said, the rudder would not respond in his efforts to manage it, when he saw that the plane was out of control.
The Fairchild KR-34 crash site. Photo from the March 28, 1977 Heritage Weekly.
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Wings Over Cumberland 