| Photo of the Month April 2026 |
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| Courtesy ACME Newspictures | |||
On the tragic, rainy and foggy morning of April 7, 1936, a TWA airliner named the Sun Racer crashed on Cheat Mountain near Uniontown, the seat of Fayette County, PA, the epicenter of our family’s growth and development since 1791.
Both pilots and 12 passengers were killed, although flight attendant Nellie Granger and two passengers somehow survived. Nellie found the strength to climb over the bodies, escape the twisted and burning DC-1 wreckage and stumble to the nearby Chestnut Ridge Road farmhouse of our cousins, Raymond Earl and Clara (McCartney) Addis of the family of Charles J. and Sarah Jane (Rankin) Addis. Nellie made an emergency telephone call and, although cut and bruised and burned, limped back to the crash site with other of our cousins including George Washington Rankin, Alfred R. Rankin and Alfred's sons Robert and Harold.
Once on the scene, Alfred and his sons "had to claw their way through trees and underbrush up the steep hill to the wreckage," writes Uniontown historian Walter "Buzz" Storey in his book Stories of Uniontown. Clara was quoted in newspaper stories nationwide, including in the New York Times, which reported that:
From the Addis home the news spread by party line and word of mouth and before dark a group of farmers aided ambulances from Uniontown and a truck from Haydentown up the rough, winding lane to the wreck. The bodies were taken in a two-horse wagon and a light truck, during the first hours of darkness, to a hotel at Summit, four miles away. Such mail as could be recovered from the wreckage was taken to the Uniontown postoffice.
Clara, Raymond and Alfred’s sons later were photographed by news reporters who were eager to capture their image for publication. The Addises testified before authorities on what they had seen, and Harold's eyewitness remarks were printed in local newspapers.
Cousin Isaac R. Hall -- of the family of Jacob and Hilah Jane (Hall) Hull -- was an eyewitness to the actual crash. He gave testimony in a federal investigation, saying he had seen the plane from "about 300 feet away coming from the north," said the Uniontown Morning Herald. "There was fog everywhere..., he said, and the "motor's tone was steady. It was about 10 o'clock, he stated, and the plane, which he heard for 'about three minutes,' veered 'to the left because of the hill in front and went right down'."
Among the victims were four cadets from the Valley Forge Military Academy. One of the surviving passengers was the wife of Newark (NJ) Mayor Meyer Ellenstein.
In 2002, a 475-lb. granite memorial, inscribed with the names of the casualties of that fateful day, was erected at the site.
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Copyright © 2026 Mark A. Miner |
