Still Missing: Rethinking the D.B. Cooper Case and Other Mysterious Unsolved Disappearances (9 page)

CHAPTER TWO

The Blocks and Their Cessna

T
he Fourth of July fell on Monday that year. A small green and white Cessna taxied down the runway and lined up for takeoff. Once in position, the pilot opened the throttle and the little aircraft sped down the runway, lifted up and climbed, then gently banked and turned north, and then disappeared in the distance.

The little Cessna never arrived at its destination, a little airport in the rural north woods of Michigan’s Lower Peninsula, and the mystery of its disappearance is one of the most baffling and little known mysteries of the American Midwest.

The Block’s Cessna at rest on the tarmac.

The year was 1977. Jimmy Carter had just succeeded Gerald Ford as the 39th President of the United States, and the first Apple II computers hit stores’ shelves, as well as the iconic Atari 2600 home video game system. TV shows “Three’s Company,” “Eight is Enough” and “The Love Boat” debuted on televisions in living rooms across the nation, and the ABC miniseries “Roots” set television ratings records. Disco was reaching its pinnacle with the release of the motion picture “Saturday Night Fever” in theaters. Another movie would hit theaters in May of that year, and make box office history; “Star Wars” became the historic highest grossing film for that time. “Smokey and the Bandit” was also an iconic hit movie on the big screen that year.

Jean Gertrude Block and John Bernard Block taken shortly before their disappearance.

The small plane’s occupants were John Bernard Block, also known as John Sr. and his wife, Jean Gertrude Block. The Blocks were a typical middle class couple. They were patriotic, hardworking and humble and were getting ready for retirement and getting ready to enjoy life’s golden years with their children and grandchildren.

John Sr., the family’s patriarch, was born in Detroit, Michigan, on New Year’s Day of 1920. He enjoyed the privilege of having his youth coincide with the “Roaring Twenties,” but also had the sobering experience of spending much of his formative teenage years in the “Great Depression” of the 1930s. Throughout the “Great Depression,” John Sr.’s father maintained a respectable job as a fire chief. This gave the family a solid financial base during these hard times.

Jean’s childhood was somewhat more difficult than that of John’s. Her father, like most men of that time, struggled to maintain employment and often the family didn’t have money for food, let alone luxuries like toys or new clothes. Seeing their parents struggle during the depression, John Sr. and Jean both developed a frugal, practical sense about them, a modest attitude that only comes about from economic uncertainty and actually going to bed hungry. They also, like many others, developed a mistrust of banks, and the banking system.

In April of 1942, John Sr. joined the countless young men and women of his generation who joined the armed forces to defend our nation against Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. He selected the U.S. Army Air Force. During the war, like many soldiers of his ilk, he wore many hats and preformed many tasks.

He was a heavy truck driver and an inspector, whose responsibility was to check the mechanical work done on jeeps, trucks and tanks. He saw action as a dispatcher in combat areas. Using this skill, he dispatched various vehicles to numerous hot spots. Later in the war, he was trained as a firefighter and drove and operated a crash truck at the airfield, skills that would form the direction of his post military career. On October 19 of 1945, Block received an honorable discharge and the thank-yous of friends and family for his heroic service. He returned to the Detroit area and began looking forward to the future.

Just a couple short weeks after entering civilian life, on November 3, 1945, John Block and Jean Mills were wed in holy matrimony in Wayne County, Michigan. John was 25 years old and Jean was 23.

Following the marriage, Block found work almost immediately at the U.S. Army Tank Automotive Command in Warren, Michigan. Armed with a solid work ethic and a quiet yet confident demeanor, he worked his way up the chain of command and eventually achieved the position of Fire Chief.

The couple had two sons in the 1940s, Michael, the elder son, and John, who was born a few years later. During 1950s and 1960s, the Block family lived a typical all-American life. Jean managed the household and played organ and was a member of the Altar Society at the St. Leonard’s Parish in Warren, while John Sr. built his career at the U.S. Army Tank Automotive Command. Son Michael excelled in sports. At that time, the Detroit area was a thriving metropolis, booming due to concentration of “the Big Three’s” automotive manufacturing. All in all, the Block family was just a quiet, typical all-American family.

The morning of July 4, 1977, John and Jean loaded their freshly packed luggage into their almost new Ford Ranchero. The plane was to fly from suburban Detroit to Northern Michigan, and there, the Blocks planned to spend some time with their two sons. Mike was in Luzerne, a tiny town about 25 miles East of Grayling, with his wife, whose parents lived there. They would also take time visit their son John, now living in Traverse City.

Around 11:10 a.m., John and Jean Block arrived at the airport and loaded their luggage and boarded their Cessna 150, a small two-seater airplane, and departed Macomb County Airport in New Haven, Michigan, which is about 35 miles north and slightly east of downtown Detroit, and headed north. Their destination was to be Lost Creek Sky Ranch Airport in Luzerne, Michigan. The distance to their destination was about 190 miles, which they should have been able to cover in less than two hours.

More than thirty years after his parents’ disappearance, John Block Jr. solemnly recalls the details of that fateful day:

We spent the day with friends on Spider Lake. We swam in the lake. It was just a beautiful day. We had an outdoor picnic of hotdogs and hamburgers. We sat on the deck and I remember watching the sunset, it was just a completely perfect, picture perfect holiday.

We went home and got a phone call, of course this was before cell phones, from my brother who asked, “Did mom and dad change their minds and fly to Traverse City? Are they there with you?”

I responded, “No, why?”

“Well, they haven’t shown up yet and it’s dark,” he said. “We’ve been waiting at the airport and we’re wondering what’s going on.”

“Well, I’ll go back into work to start a search and use the assets there, you know, radio and teletypes, and get some advice and help,” I responded.

We knew there was an issue, right away, when it was dark, because he was not instrument rated to fly, so we know there was some kind of problem, but we were hoping he perhaps put down at an airport or somewhere he couldn’t readily get to a phone. And we had some positive feelings because he was an excellent pilot, stunt rated. It was a newer aircraft. The furthest thing from my mind was that they crashed.

I stayed at the Grand Traverse Sheriff’s Department, where I worked at the time, for most of the night and talked and got advice from other agencies.

When we have missing aircraft like that, what we try to do is estimate possible alternate airports that they could have landed at, or any airport near the flight path and we’ll contact them.

We got out a map and started at Mt. Clemens, Michigan, Northwest of Detroit and spread the flight path out. And started calling individual police departments rather than the airports and told them we were investigating an overdue aircraft and could they check the airports in their area. So, they did that all through the night, and by the time we left, all but one or two airports had been contacted and they weren’t at those airports.

The next morning came, and we had then contacted the Air Force Search and Rescue, which the Civil Air Patrol (CAP) is part of. The interesting thing is the aircraft my parents were in was a Civil Air Patrol aircraft. His partner, who owned the other half of the plane, was a certified Search & Rescue Pilot with the CAP, and the aircraft was equipped with extra equipment, and even painted with international orange wingtips and tail section so it could be easily spotted from the air or ground. The plane had an emergency location transmitter (ELT), which is supposed to automatically set off a satellite signal if it crashes, kind of like airbags are set off in a (car) crash.

When the sun rose on July 5th, the day following the Block’s disappearance, authorities sprang into action across the state. The East Detroit Police Department was contacted and sent a patrol car to check out the Block’s residence. They reported no signs of the Blocks at their home. The house was empty. The Police Department in Lewiston, about 20 miles north of Luzerne, similarly investigated a report from a citizen who claimed to have heard a plane crash on July 4. Again, the results were negative. Nothing was found.

Newspapers also started running stories of things that happened on Independence Day. The following article from the
Traverse City Record Eagle
mentions the disappearance, and a plane crash caused by weather:

PLANE CRASH KILLS 4 IN
FREESOIL TOWNSHIP

By Marty Sommerness, Record Eagle staff writer

FREESOIL – Four men were killed in a Fourth of July airplane crash in Mason County’s Free Soil Township. State Police said the twin-engine Piper Apache was en route from Grand Haven to Escanaba when it crashed during a severe thunderstorm sometime about 8 p.m.

Police reports indicate witnesses said the aircraft was ripped apart by heavy air turbulence and high winds before it fell from the sky. The victims were thrown from the airplane while it was still in the air.

Dead are the pilot, Michael J. Reich, 23, of Norton Shores, and passengers Walter D. Thompson, 36, of Spring Lake, George H. Schamber, 36 of Muskegon Heights and Edward J. Brook, 23 of Grand Rapids.

Federal Aviation Administration officials were summoned to investigate the crash. The wreckage was located in a wooded area about 1½ miles northeast of Free Soil.

GT DEPUTY’S FOLKS MISSING
IN 2ND PLANE

Elsewhere In the state, a search by the Civil Air Patrol (CAP) was underway for an airplane carrying the fire chief of the Detroit suburb of Warren and his wife.

John Block, 56, apparently failed to file a flight plan report when he left the Macomb County Airport near Mount Clemens with his wife, Jan, 53, in a Cessna 150, said State Police from the Manistee post.

Police indicate that Block left in a single-engine aircraft Monday, bound for the Lost Creek Sky Ranch west of Mio. Four CAP planes and three ground crew units were centering their search in a wooded area just north of West Branch in Ogemaw County. Capt. Russell Smith, coordinator of the CAP mission in Bay City, described the single-engine plane as a two passenger, green and white aircraft.

Block’s son, John Block, is a detective with a Grand Traverse County Sheriff Department. State Police said the couple was planning to meet him for a holiday visit.

This morning, CAP conducted an air search over Charlevoix County’s Horton Bay for signs of an airplane crash. The search was called off because of ground fog.

Charlevoix County Sheriff Department officials said they received a report at about 8 p.m. Monday of a loud noise, that some believed to be an airplane crash. A ground party was scheduled to search the area this morning.

Another article from the
United Press International
appeared in the same issue of the
Traverse City Record Eagle
describing a series of storms which later in the day ravaged much of the vast area where the Blocks were thought to have disappeared:

STORMS HIT STATE, LEAVE DEATH
IN THEIR WAKE

(UPI) - Severe thunderstorms and several funnel clouds swept through the Lower Peninsula late Monday, causing widespread damage, power outages and a plane crash in which four persons were killed.