Resting place amid the pines
Wed, 10/21/2015 - 7:20pm
News Staff
Tragedy of plane crash remembered 50 years later
“Any chance he could get, he would fly, which is why the college would call when they needed a pilot."
By Will Shoemaker
Pilot Vince Noice never wanted to make the trip. The weather was dicey, and Noice had big plans to fly his family to Colorado Springs to see an opera the following weekend.
But as the only member of the local flying club available that particular day — and welcoming any excuse to take to the air — Noice agreed to shuttle the three graduate assistant coaches of the Western State College football team to scout a game in Silver City, N.M.
On Saturday, Oct. 16, 1965, Noice and coaches Jim Novak, Bob Busia and Garth Yorton boarded the single-engine Cessna 182 as a storm front was moving in from the southwest.
Monday marked the 50th anniversary of the plane’s disappearance. For nearly 10 days that followed, Gunnison was gripped by uncertainty as air and ground searches combed mountainous terrain for any sign of the missing men or their aircraft.
On Oct. 27, anxiety was put to rest when an unsuspecting forest ranger spotted the plane’s wreckage on a piece of private ground near Cimarron belonging to sheep-ranching friends of Noice.
“My parents had talked about it. They didn’t want their bodies carted around after they died,” said Betsy Noice Martin, Vince’s daughter and a junior at Gunnison High School at the time.
Today, Noice’s grave remains a hundred yards from the site of the crash. The wreckage is still strewn amid towering black timber — a reminder a half century later of the tragedy that took four lives, including that of the pilot one day before his 53rd birthday.
‘I knew these guys’
The 1964 Western football team under the guidance of coach O. Kay Dalton is arguably the greatest in the program’s history. The squad remained undefeated through the regular season and competed in that year’s Mineral Bowl, losing by a single point to North Dakota State.
Novak and Yorton were seniors on the team that year, earning All-Conference status. While their eligibility had expired, both stuck around Gunnison for the 1965 season.
After playing baseball and football in college, Busia was assigned to the Pittsburg Pirates professional baseball team for spring training in 1965. He was released when Dalton offered him a graduate assistant coaching position.
At the time of the crash, Dalton’s Mountaineers were undefeated and ranked fourth in the nation.
“I knew all these guys,” said Western history professor of 53 years Duane Vandenbusche of the coaches killed in the crash. “I had Jim Novak and Garth Yorton in class.”
Wintry weather changes plans
At the time, gas was cheap, Gunnison boasted an avid community of flying enthusiasts and quick trips by plane to scout another team weren’t uncommon for Western’s football coaches.
After attending Saturday’s football game between Western New Mexico University and Colorado School of Mines — Western’s next opponent — Noice and the three coaches on Sunday flew to Farmington, N.M., where they were forced to spend the night due to heavy snowfall. Noice called his wife to inform her that while they had planned to go east back to Gunnison, that route was socked in. Instead, they would go west in an attempt to skirt the storm.
Monday at 1 p.m., the plane landed in Cortez, refueled and took to the air again after a break in the weather around 3:30.
Noice didn’t file a flight plan, and Cortez was the last place that anyone outside the plane spoke with the Gunnison pilot and his passengers.
The storm had dumped so much snow on the San Juan Mountains that power and telephone lines were down. At first, friends and loved ones didn’t worry that the plane was overdue.
The love of flight
Vince Noice and Betty Rayner likely met in the San Luis Valley. Vince worked as a ranch hand, and Betty taught in a one-room school house.
The couple married in Lake Forest, Ill., but the mountains of Colorado called them back. They settled down in Gunnison in 1943 and had three children — two boys and a girl.
Betty taught English at Western, and Vince was the Culligan man in Gunnison. He built the family’s log house at the corner of Loveland and Georgia. After selling the Culligan business, Vince bought buildings that previously stood in White Pine, bringing them to Gunnison where he fixed them up as apartments. Vince also had taken up flying.
Rocky Warren, owner of fixed-based operator Western State Aviation and manager of the local airport, actively promoted the pursuit — resulting in numerous locals taking up the pastime and learning together.
Noice was among those who fell under Warren’s wing.
“Any chance he could get, he would fly, which is why the college would call when they needed a pilot,” said daughter Betsy, who was working at A&W as a car hop that fateful Monday evening when her father failed to return home as planned.
Search ensues
In the ensuing days, a massive search unfolded.
“It had a tremendous impact on not only the campus, but the community,” said Western’s Vandenbusche. “Nobody had any idea what happened.”
Civil Air Patrol reported flying a total of 90 air hours covering nearly 3,000 square miles on Wednesday alone, according to the Gunnison County Globe. Utah’s Civil Air Patrol was called in, and four volunteer planes owned by Western State Aviation aided in the search.
“My biggest fear was they were out there hurt and nobody could get to them,” said Betsy, who now lives in Grand Junction. “Here I had my nice, comfortable bed. That was tough.”
In a 48-page account of events surrounding the crash, Noice’s wife Betty, who’s since died, recounted requesting help from her husband’s nephew Harold — a “water witcher” — in an act of desperation.
While planes were searching further west, between Grand Junction and Cortez, Harold indicated the crash site was closer to Lake City, noting additional details about the accident: two men were still in the plane; one was wearing a dark-colored coat; the site was near an old Indian trail; the plane dived into tall trees; the man most visible was blonde with a crewcut; and the wreckage would be found by someone who wasn’t looking for it.
Final resting place
All of those aspects surrounding the crash, Betty recalled, proved accurate when Forest Service employee Richard Burkholster of Montrose discovered the crash site while marking timber.
The plane was discovered near 10,000 feet on a quarter-section of private property previously owned by the Maurer family. The four men likely died upon impact, and two of them were ejected. The exact cause of the crash remains a mystery. However, it’s suspected that icing in the fuel line may have caused a loss of power when Noice switched tanks.
The day the wreckage was located, Gunnison County Sheriff George Cope and a party of four-wheel-drive vehicles carrying 20 people climbed the six-mile double-track road from the bottom of the Little Cimarron River Valley to make the recovery of the three Western coaches, according to the Globe.
The 1965 season was coach Dalton’s last at Western. He would go on to coach at the college and professional levels — including a stint as the wide receivers coach for the Denver Broncos.
An article in the spring 1966 edition of Colorful Colorado magazine details Noice’s burial.
“From their vehicles, they unloaded hammers and saws and planks and, there on the mountainside, built a pine coffin,” it reads. “As the men carefully lowered away their burden into the grave, the Rev. Sterling Wilkes McHarg, pastor of the Gunnison Community Church, pronounced the last rites over the body of Vince Noice.”
A grave marker was fashioned from part of the airplane’s propeller, which Betty described in the parting sentence from her account of the tragedy.
“The plain silver shaft bright against the dark forest still stands sentinel at the edge of Coyote Park.”
(Will Shoemaker can be contacted at 970.641.1414 or editor@gunnisontimes.com.)
Pilot Vince Noice never wanted to make the trip. The weather was dicey, and Noice had big plans to fly his family to Colorado Springs to see an opera the following weekend.
But as the only member of the local flying club available that particular day — and welcoming any excuse to take to the air — Noice agreed to shuttle the three graduate assistant coaches of the Western State College football team to scout a game in Silver City, N.M.
On Saturday, Oct. 16, 1965, Noice and coaches Jim Novak, Bob Busia and Garth Yorton boarded the single-engine Cessna 182 as a storm front was moving in from the southwest.
Monday marked the 50th anniversary of the plane’s disappearance. For nearly 10 days that followed, Gunnison was gripped by uncertainty as air and ground searches combed mountainous terrain for any sign of the missing men or their aircraft.
On Oct. 27, anxiety was put to rest when an unsuspecting forest ranger spotted the plane’s wreckage on a piece of private ground near Cimarron belonging to sheep-ranching friends of Noice.
“My parents had talked about it. They didn’t want their bodies carted around after they died,” said Betsy Noice Martin, Vince’s daughter and a junior at Gunnison High School at the time.
Today, Noice’s grave remains a hundred yards from the site of the crash. The wreckage is still strewn amid towering black timber — a reminder a half century later of the tragedy that took four lives, including that of the pilot one day before his 53rd birthday.
‘I knew these guys’
The 1964 Western football team under the guidance of coach O. Kay Dalton is arguably the greatest in the program’s history. The squad remained undefeated through the regular season and competed in that year’s Mineral Bowl, losing by a single point to North Dakota State.
Novak and Yorton were seniors on the team that year, earning All-Conference status. While their eligibility had expired, both stuck around Gunnison for the 1965 season.
After playing baseball and football in college, Busia was assigned to the Pittsburg Pirates professional baseball team for spring training in 1965. He was released when Dalton offered him a graduate assistant coaching position.
At the time of the crash, Dalton’s Mountaineers were undefeated and ranked fourth in the nation.
“I knew all these guys,” said Western history professor of 53 years Duane Vandenbusche of the coaches killed in the crash. “I had Jim Novak and Garth Yorton in class.”
Wintry weather changes plans
At the time, gas was cheap, Gunnison boasted an avid community of flying enthusiasts and quick trips by plane to scout another team weren’t uncommon for Western’s football coaches.
After attending Saturday’s football game between Western New Mexico University and Colorado School of Mines — Western’s next opponent — Noice and the three coaches on Sunday flew to Farmington, N.M., where they were forced to spend the night due to heavy snowfall. Noice called his wife to inform her that while they had planned to go east back to Gunnison, that route was socked in. Instead, they would go west in an attempt to skirt the storm.
Monday at 1 p.m., the plane landed in Cortez, refueled and took to the air again after a break in the weather around 3:30.
Noice didn’t file a flight plan, and Cortez was the last place that anyone outside the plane spoke with the Gunnison pilot and his passengers.
The storm had dumped so much snow on the San Juan Mountains that power and telephone lines were down. At first, friends and loved ones didn’t worry that the plane was overdue.
The love of flight
Vince Noice and Betty Rayner likely met in the San Luis Valley. Vince worked as a ranch hand, and Betty taught in a one-room school house.
The couple married in Lake Forest, Ill., but the mountains of Colorado called them back. They settled down in Gunnison in 1943 and had three children — two boys and a girl.
Betty taught English at Western, and Vince was the Culligan man in Gunnison. He built the family’s log house at the corner of Loveland and Georgia. After selling the Culligan business, Vince bought buildings that previously stood in White Pine, bringing them to Gunnison where he fixed them up as apartments. Vince also had taken up flying.
Rocky Warren, owner of fixed-based operator Western State Aviation and manager of the local airport, actively promoted the pursuit — resulting in numerous locals taking up the pastime and learning together.
Noice was among those who fell under Warren’s wing.
“Any chance he could get, he would fly, which is why the college would call when they needed a pilot,” said daughter Betsy, who was working at A&W as a car hop that fateful Monday evening when her father failed to return home as planned.
Search ensues
In the ensuing days, a massive search unfolded.
“It had a tremendous impact on not only the campus, but the community,” said Western’s Vandenbusche. “Nobody had any idea what happened.”
Civil Air Patrol reported flying a total of 90 air hours covering nearly 3,000 square miles on Wednesday alone, according to the Gunnison County Globe. Utah’s Civil Air Patrol was called in, and four volunteer planes owned by Western State Aviation aided in the search.
“My biggest fear was they were out there hurt and nobody could get to them,” said Betsy, who now lives in Grand Junction. “Here I had my nice, comfortable bed. That was tough.”
In a 48-page account of events surrounding the crash, Noice’s wife Betty, who’s since died, recounted requesting help from her husband’s nephew Harold — a “water witcher” — in an act of desperation.
While planes were searching further west, between Grand Junction and Cortez, Harold indicated the crash site was closer to Lake City, noting additional details about the accident: two men were still in the plane; one was wearing a dark-colored coat; the site was near an old Indian trail; the plane dived into tall trees; the man most visible was blonde with a crewcut; and the wreckage would be found by someone who wasn’t looking for it.
Final resting place
All of those aspects surrounding the crash, Betty recalled, proved accurate when Forest Service employee Richard Burkholster of Montrose discovered the crash site while marking timber.
The plane was discovered near 10,000 feet on a quarter-section of private property previously owned by the Maurer family. The four men likely died upon impact, and two of them were ejected. The exact cause of the crash remains a mystery. However, it’s suspected that icing in the fuel line may have caused a loss of power when Noice switched tanks.
The day the wreckage was located, Gunnison County Sheriff George Cope and a party of four-wheel-drive vehicles carrying 20 people climbed the six-mile double-track road from the bottom of the Little Cimarron River Valley to make the recovery of the three Western coaches, according to the Globe.
The 1965 season was coach Dalton’s last at Western. He would go on to coach at the college and professional levels — including a stint as the wide receivers coach for the Denver Broncos.
An article in the spring 1966 edition of Colorful Colorado magazine details Noice’s burial.
“From their vehicles, they unloaded hammers and saws and planks and, there on the mountainside, built a pine coffin,” it reads. “As the men carefully lowered away their burden into the grave, the Rev. Sterling Wilkes McHarg, pastor of the Gunnison Community Church, pronounced the last rites over the body of Vince Noice.”
A grave marker was fashioned from part of the airplane’s propeller, which Betty described in the parting sentence from her account of the tragedy.
“The plain silver shaft bright against the dark forest still stands sentinel at the edge of Coyote Park.”
(Will Shoemaker can be contacted at 970.641.1414 or editor@gunnisontimes.com.)
