It has been 65 years, but Vina Hannan Sawyer has never forgotten the 1944 Long Creek air tragedy. The Houlton native was 17 at the time, working as a mother’s helper in a trailer community in South Portland near the Portland airport. On the afternoon of July 11, an Army bomber on a training flight crashed next to the Westbrook Trailer Camp and broke into flaming pieces, igniting a firestorm that killed 17 people in the close-knit community, as well as the pilot and the flight engineer.
Sawyer, who was preparing supper at the time of the crash, suddenly found herself in the center of a life-and-death crisis.
Dazed and suffering from extensive third-degree burns on her face, arms and legs, Sawyer located the two children in her charge, both of whom were critically burned, and stayed with them until they were taken to the hospital. Both children died the next day. Their mother died in the fire.
Sawyer was hospitalized for more than five weeks and carries the scars of her injuries to this day.
Now 84 and living in Houlton, Sawyer is the oldest living survivor of one of the worst airplane disasters in Maine history. On Sunday at Dysart’s truck stop in Hermon, she met up with John Kierstead, a South Portland native who is spearheading an effort to make sure the Long Creek tragedy is memorialized for the future.
Most of the victims on the ground that fateful day were women and young children, the families of men who worked in the wartime shipyards of South Portland.
“I think about it a lot,” Sawyer said Sunday. “With all those children, you can never really forget a thing like that.”
Hazel Little, the shipbuilder and young mother for whom Sawyer worked, died in the fire. Little’s children — James, 4, and Nancy, 2 — perished the following day from the burns.
Kierstead said Sawyer’s efforts to save Little’s two children that terrible day, despite the life-threatening burns she endured herself, would have won her a medal if she had been in a military setting.
“Vina’s a big hero,” he said. Kierstead said he will petition the state Legislature to name a day in Sawyer’s honor and in memory of the Long Creek Air Tragedy.
The Westbrook Trailer Camp is long gone. It was located off Westbrook Street, near a planned community of duplexes called Redbank Village designed by famed Portland architect John Calvin Stevens and his son. Another housing complex, Olde English Village, stands on the site of the trailer camp.
Long Creek is the name of a small tidal stream that flows through the area and empties into the Fore River.
Kierstead is also raising money to erect a monument at a small park near the site of the crash. In addition, he plans to honor the victims of the tragedy each year with a memorial service at the park. This past July 11, survivors, family members and others who remembered the tragedy gathered at the park to lay a wreath and remember those who were lost.
“The state should have done this years ago,” Kierstead said. “This was the worst air tragedy in the history of the state.”
Kierstead said his father knew the pilot of the bomber, 23-year-old Army Air Corps Lt. Philip “Phee” Russell, who had been a popular and accomplished athlete at South Portland High School.
Russell, who was stationed at a military base in Louisiana, was on a training flight with the new bomber. He had permission to land in Portland for a reunion with his young wife and 3-month-old daughter. The heartwarming wartime reunion was to have been documented in Maine newspapers the next day.
Instead, the papers were filled with the story of the tragedy and photos of the deadly inferno.
“I’ve known about this since I was a little boy,” Kierstead said Sunday. “My father was in combat in France at the time of the accident. He always said, ‘Phee Russell got killed right in his own backyard — it’s just not fair.’”
Since he began building support for the Long Creek memorial, Kierstead said, he has met about 100 people with connections to the disaster. Some remain scarred, physically and emotionally, he said, from the horrific events of the day.
Sawyer, who worked as a beautician and a nursing assistant until her retirement at age 76, still bears the pale scars of her burns. She said on Sunday that she hopes to join Kierstead in South Portland next summer to dedicate the new memorial — a pink granite block with a plaque inscribed with the names of the victims.
People who want to donate to the memorial may send checks to Long Creek Air Tragedy, South Portland City Hall, 25 Cottage Road, South Portland, 04106. Make checks payable to Long Creek Air Tragedy Memorial.
On the Web: www.redbankstreets.com
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