Honky Tonk Angel (48 page)

“Yes.”

“Oh, thank God. Jan, this is Hank [Cochran]. Are you all right?”

“Yeah: I was asleep, Hank.”

“Then it’s Patsy.”

“What are you talking about?”

“If you’re all right, then there’s something wrong with Patsy.”

“Hank, what on earth are you talking about?”

“I’m in Fred Foster’s office at Monument [Records], and a few minutes ago two albums fell off the shelf—one of yours and one of Patsy’s. I just had a gut feeling that something was wrong.”

“Where’s Patsy?”

“I don’t know. Don’t you worry. I’ll call you back.”

“Hank, please let me know if something’s wrong with Patsy.”

“I’ll talk to you later.”

Roger Miller heard the news. “I used to cruise around town in my ’forty-nine Dodge to think and write music. I was everywhere at once. I tuned in to WSM, and Grant Turner was saying that the plane carrying Patsy, Cowboy, Hawk, and Randy was late arriving at Cornelia Fort Air Park and presumed missing. That was about one A.M. They hadn’t announced that the plane had crashed, only that it was overdue. Then Grant announced the flying time from Dyersburg to Nashville and pinpointed an area around Camden where a farmer had seen a plane that looked like it was in trouble and may have crashed. A communications check by radio failed to locate the plane or bring any response. The Civil Air Patrol was forming a search party.”

Shortly before midnight, a party of fifteen men began a search in a three- to four-mile radius of Sandy Point, a village about four miles west of Camden. The police dispatcher there said several farmers saw or heard a plane circling with its engine cutting out. A few minutes later they heard a strange noise, which sounded like a crash. Most of those phoning in pinpointed the possible crash around one particular object, the fire tower off Mule Barn Road in Sandy Point, approximately five miles west of the Tennessee River.

A discrepancy exists in the exact time of the crash, and no one will ever know the facts. A report listing results of the CAB investigation said that the crash occurred “about 20 minutes after [the plane] took off.” But residents who came forward to Sheriff Loyce Furr had placed the crash at another time. R. C. King of Route 2, Camden, told Gerald Henry, the staff correspondent for the Tennessean, the next day: “I heard a plane backfire around 7:30, then I heard it hit the bushes.” Mossie Miller of Route 1, Camden, stated to Henry: “I heard something pop a little after seven. The dogs ran out. My wife heard a roar and a pop and then nothing.” Patsy’s watch stopped at 6:20, Randy’s at 6:25.

When Miller got word of the search party, “I suddenly realized that I had to go there. The blood came rushing to my head and I speeded around town, going from door to door, trying to get someone to go with me. It was raining, and I had visions of Patsy, Randy, and the guys maybe hanging from the seats, not able to help themselves. Me and another boy, Don, whose last name I can’t remember, headed straight there.”

Carl Perkins was about to set out fishing when he heard the news. He left
his boat and headed for Camden. Since he had priority license plates, he was able to get his car through the police checkpoint. Perkins drove along until he stopped his car in disbelief. “There was Patsy’s bloodied red slip hanging from a tree and Hawk’s white cowboy hat standing as tall as it would have on his head.”

Miller drove north of Camden, out along Highway 70. “Then I stopped. I looked out and there was this farmhouse standing right there. I can see it clearly even now. It was about two-thirty or three o’clock in the morning, but the lights were on. I knocked on the door. A lady opened it and I asked about anything she or her husband might have seen or heard that might be a plane in trouble.

“She told me, ‘No, we ain’t heard no plane crashing. We been up here watching this storm and seemed to me I heard a noise that sounded like a clap of thunder a few hours ago right here behind the house. I thought it went with the rain.’

“Don and I went running into the woods just a-yelling and a-screaming their names—Patsy! Randy! Hawk! Cowboy!”

At 3:00 A.M., Jan’s phone rang. She was awake, tossing, turning, hoping, praying. It was Hank Cochran again.

“Oh, Jan,” he told her, “this is horrible. Randy’s plane is missing, and he was carrying Patsy, Hawk, and Cowboy Copas. It’s been confirmed on the radio.”

Jan was stunned. She couldn’t speak. The words wouldn’t come out.

“Jan. Jan! Are you there? Are you okay?”

“Yes, Hank,” she finally replied, “I’m okay. This is quite a blow. I can’t believe it. There are no other reports? Where did it happen?”

“Hon, I’ve got to see what I can do. Turn your radio on. I’ll call you if I find out anything else.”

Jan kept thinking that somehow there’d been an error. She turned the radio on. The reports didn’t say anyone had been killed. “That night will live in my memory forever. I can never forget it. All I could do was pace and pray. Then I thought of Jeanie and realized I had to be with her. Just a day or so before Hawk left for Kansas City, Harlan and I were at their house. We played a game of Crazy Eights until Jeanie, who was big with the baby, became uncomfortable. Hawk took us out to see his show horses and ran them through some tricks.”

At 4:00 A.M. in Winchester, Virginia, the phone at the Hensley home rang and rang. Patsy’s brother Sam finally ran to answer it.

“Hello. Who is this?” He heard someone talking but wasn’t especially attentive. “I’m sorry, what did you say?” It was a friend of the family trying to relay what he’d heard on the radio. “Hey, is this some kind of joke? Patsy’s not on any plane. Why don’t you go back to sleep?” He slammed the phone down and started back to his room.

“Who was that?” asked Mrs. Hensley, who’d come to the living room.

“Some crackpot!”

The phone rang back at once. Sam grabbed it. “Hey, I told you that Patsy is not on any plane!”

“Wait a minute,” exclaimed Mrs. Hensley, snatching the phone from her son’s hand. “Patsy
was
on a plane!”

Mrs. Hensley fell into Sam’s arms. She was moaning. All sorts of thoughts ran through her mind. She kept saying over and over again, “My God, how can
this be, when they waited out the storm?” She turned on the radio. Moments later Joltin’ Jim McCoy called her from station WINC to confirm that the plane was missing.

It was now 5:30, and for nearly two hours Roger Miller and his friend Don had been running through the woods yelling at the top of their lungs. “The briar was so bad it had torn our clothes,” related Miller, “and we’d been cut here and there. But we kept at it. Then we came to this clearing, and I spotted the fire tower. I climbed to the top and there it was, about twenty yards away. The trees had been chewed up. Debris hung from the branches. I went back to the main road, where the search party was gathering, and informed the highway patrol. An officer asked me to lead the way. As fast as I could, I ran through the brush and the trees, and when I came up over this little rise, oh, my God, there they were.”

The Butlers were returning from their California dates. The utility trailer behind their Cadillac was packed with instruments, amplifiers, and Carl and Patsy’s costumes.

“I can’t tell you, having known Patsy all those years, how proud I was to be wearing those outfits,” Pearl said. “I felt like a million dollars on those shows!”

It was about daybreak. The Butlers were almost home, driving through the “Tennessee sticks” in an intense rain and windstorm when Grant Turner played one of their songs. “No matter where we were,” Pearl explained, “we’d call the disc jockey at the particular station to thank him for playing our record. They got a kick out of that, and played more of your records! We kept looking for a phone booth, but you could hardly see a thing in front of you.

“‘There’s one, Carl!’ I yelled. ‘Pull over so we can call Grant.’ He got as close as possible so I wouldn’t get wet, but the wind was blowing so bad I could barely get the door open. I dialed the operator, who heard the wind howling. She said, ‘Ma’am, if the booth starts to blow over, don’t worry about hanging up. Just get out.’ I told her I appreciated her advice, but that I’d probably be in it!

“When I got through to Grant, he asked, ‘Pearl, where are y’all?’ I told him and said, ‘What do you wanna know that for? You gonna come meet us for coffee and doughnuts?’ He sounded excited. ‘Pearl, just whereabouts are you?’ I replied, ‘Heck, I don’t know. Not far from Nashville. Just a minute. Let me yell to Carl.’ I yelled, but he didn’t hear me. I told Grant, ‘Hon, I think we’re someplace right outside of Camden. Know where that is?’

“He said, ‘That’s about where the plane crashed!’ My first instinct was to look out of the booth, but I couldn’t see noplace. That’s how bad the rain was. I asked, ‘What plane are you talking about? Who crashed? Somebody we know?’ Grant answered, ‘Oh, honey, you don’t know?’ I said, ‘Don’t I know what?’ He told me, ‘Yes, you know them.’ ‘Them?’ I asked. And he told me what happened, and I couldn’t believe it. The receiver just hung in my hand. I prayed to God it wasn’t so. I didn’t how how to tell Carl. He loved Hawk and Cowboy and adored Patsy.”

Dottie was in a deep sleep. She didn’t hear the phone ringing. There was a knocking at the door.

“Grandmother West?”

“Yes, honey.”

“Come on in.” Dottie was half asleep but could see she was quite upset. “Grandmother West, what’s wrong?”

“Oh, Dottie, wake up! Their plane is down!”

“What plane?”

“The plane Randy Hughes was flying. It’s crashed, and they think for sure it’s the one Patsy’s in!”

“Oh, no! That’s not possible.” She threw the covers back and hurled herself out of bed. “What do you mean?”

“Honey, that plane Patsy, Hawkshaw Hawkins, and Cowboy Copas were coming home in has crashed somewhere up in the hills.”

“No, that can’t be true. Randy wouldn’t do anything foolish!”

Dottie woke her husband, and they turned the radio on. They lived an isolated life in the country. Dottie wanted more information. There had to be survivors. They started making frantic phone calls.

“I had to know,” said Dottie. “And, my God, it was true.”

When Miller arrived at the crash site, he wanted to turn back. “It was ghastly. The plane had crashed nose-down. It plowed into the earth on this steep hillside. The engine lay at the bottom of a five- or six-foot-wide crater that was filled with water. The explosion people had heard was not from a gasoline explosion. There had been no fire. It was the sound of the plane’s impact. It was all twisted metal and pieces of bodies. There was more of Patsy’s body left intact than there was of the others. It was a maddening experience. I saw people already picking through the wreckage, and I screamed at them. Souvenir hunters, scavengers! It was impossible to comprehend. Especially when you loved those folks the way I did.” Miller surmised that Randy was in the clouds and thought he was climbing at full power and instead was going down.

Published reports in the local press credit members of the search party arriving first at the fire tower and sighting the crash through field glasses. On the ground, however, W. J. Hollingsworth and his twenty-year-old son Jeners, who farmed corn and cotton off Sandy River Road, and Louis and Carl Bradford, who farmed nearby, happened upon the scene.