GILLSBURG — Survivors and rescuers of the Oct. 20, 1977, Lynyrd Skynyrd plane crash as well as a small legion of fans and others curious about the dark day in rock ‘n’ roll history and local lore flocked to the crash site on Saturday, the 41st anniversary of the tragedy.
Lynyrd Skynyrd music blared on speakers and concert footage played on a loop on a television in Dwain Easley’s open-air pavilion just a few hundred yards from where the doomed Convair CV-240 with 26 aboard raked the treetops before crashing in a thicket of bottomland hardwoods.
Gene Odom, a childhood friend of late Lynyrd Skynyrd singer Ronnie Van Zant who later became the band’s chief of security, was on the flight from Greenville, S.C., to Baton Rouge, as were lighting rigger Mark Howard and drum tech Marc Frank. All three returned to the site Saturday.
Howard and Frank also came back in 2017, the 40th anniversary of the crash, where a much smaller crowd met up at Easley’s place, and the survivors got to meet Easley and Jamie Wall, who both participated in the rescue effort.
For Odom, Saturday was the first time he successfully managed to return to the crash site. He said he came back about 35 years ago, but a landowner turned him away.
On Saturday, Easley, whose land abuts the crash site, had a barbecue and allowed a small gathering to come.
“I wanted to come back but just never got around to buckling down and coming back down here, but these guys setting this thing up and then I had a chance to meet these people who helped us during the crash,” Odom said. “It’s a special time. It was nice to meet these people.”
Odom grew up a street over from Van Zant and recalled his friend reaching out to him to join the band’s entourage after Odom had a brief stint in the military.
“He wanted to get off the drugs and the booze and all and was making big money, and he wanted me to take care of him,” he said. “That was the end of ‘76.”
Odom’s stint with the band all but ended with the crash that killed Van Zant along with guitarist Steve Gaines, backing vocalist Cassie Gaines, assistant road manager Dean Kilpatrick, pilot Walter McCreary and co-pilot William Gray.
Odom said the crash may have killed six people, but not the band’s legacy.
“It would be different if that ended it on Oct. 20, but they were so fantastic and had such successful music it’s been carrying on and on and on the radio,” he said. “... It’s historic. They’re one of the few rock ‘n’ roll musicians that survived 41 years after the crash.”
Bobby McDaniel of McComb also returned to the site, as he does every year to remember his role in the rescue effort.
“I’m an Eagle Scout — Red Cross, first aid. McComb had a very real civil air patrol. I was trained in looking for crash sites,” he said. “We trained looking from the air and we trained looking from the land. I wasn’t trained in rescue, but I was in the Civil Air Patrol.
“I was in K&B drug store ... and that was the first time it broke on the radio: Plane crash outside of Magnolia. I went out to my car and put my CB on channel 12. That’s the channel the civil air patrol monitors. I radioed and they told me where the crash was and I had to ask them two more times, three times total, because they were directing me exactly to my farm, which is only 2,000 feet from the crash site.”
McDaniel said he rushed to the scene and tried to locate a command post. He said he saw an ambulance driver named Eddie Smith, “a big ole boy.”
“He grabbed me and threw me up in the ambulance. He said, ‘Other ambulances are stuck and they’ve got trucks down there trying to get them out and we’re trying to find out a way to get down there without going through that pasture,’ “ he said.
McDaniel pointed out a nearby ridge where he had squirrel hunted as a youth and tried to access the site from there.
“The helicopters were here early and I went to where the helicopters were,” he said, describing a chaotic scene with about 30 rescuers frantically working to retrieve the living and the dead.
On Saturday, groups of people walked in and out of the woods to the vicinity of the crash site. Some even found pieces of the plane.
Skynyrd fan, reunion organizer and de-facto crash site tour guide Mike Rounsaville of Charleston drove down from the north Mississippi hamlet and pointed out the significant spots in the woods.
“You’re standing in the vicinity of where the fuselage landed, right about here,” he said. “The two big pines right here, that’s about where the cockpit landed.”
He and others speculated on the cause of the crash. Howard and Frank had both said they recalled seeing flames shooting out of the engine of the plane on previous flights. The aircraft had been scheduled for repairs once it landed in Baton Rouge, had it ever made it there. All of the passengers were anxious about boarding it, they said.
Rounsaville speculated that the engines were running rich, burning too much fuel because of a malfunction and the decision to carry on instead of repairing it proved fatal.
He said the pilots tried to land in an open field, since returning to the airport in McComb was out of the question.
“It cost six lives is what it cost,” he said. “If they would have put 10 more gallons of fuel, they might have made it to McComb.”
Dennis Brown, 43, drove more than 10 hours one way from Johnson City, Tenn., to pay homage to one of his favorite bands.
Brown manages a tribute Instagram page about Lynyrd Skynyrd, and for him this was sort of a pilgrimage.
“I just love Ronnie and I love the band. Ronnie played two shows in my hometown. ... My dad got to see them the last time they were there, the April 22, 1977, show,” Brown said. “People love Lynyrd Skynyrd there.
“I really get into the history and I try to preserve the history of the band,” he said.
