Danger in the air: Perils await crop dusters

Published: Sunday, October 22, 2000

In the small sitting area of Foshee Spraying Service, two pilots sat at a table and hastily ate their lunch of sandwiches and potato chips.

Through the door, the sound of propellers and rumbling engines vibrated off the concrete floor and tall metal coverings of the hangar.

Paul Hockett and Mike Mohr had spent the better part of the calm, clear Wednesday morning in their small spray planes, waging a chemical war against boll weevils in cotton fields near Brownfield.

Both would finish off the afternoon doing the same thing flying and swooping low to the ground, again and again, releasing a mist of chemicals only five feet above the red-soiled fields.

Just behind Hockett, hanging on the wood-paneled wall, was a framed photograph of the late Cliff Foshee, posing next to a spray plane and smiling into the camera. The blue-sky background in the photo was almost the same as Wednesday's mild weather.

Neither pilot at the table worked at Foshee Spraying last year, when, on Oct. 5, the 36-year-old man in the photo clipped a power line and crashed his Piper Pawnee Brave into a field.

Foshee was pronounced dead at the scene in a field three miles west of Brownfield. Witnesses said his plane burst into flames.

His death marked the first fatality in an agricultural aircraft for the fiscal year 2000 in Lubbock's Federal Aviation Administration district. The year runs Oct. 1 through Sept. 30.

At almost the same time Wednesday, while Hockett and Mohr were tearing into sandwiches and eager to get back out to the fields, 75-year-old Jack LeClair was pronounced dead on the scene in a cotton field near Littlefield, about 50 miles north of Foshee Flying Service.

Neither pilot, nor the two pilots still out flying, had any way of knowing that LeClair, a crop duster for 50 years, had crashed and died during lunchtime Wednesday.

LeClair, flying as part of the Boll Weevil Eradication program, clipped power lines, went into a flat spin and crashed. His single-engine plane exploded on impact, according to a Texas Department of Public Safety spokesperson.

LeClair's death marked the first fatality in an agricultural plane for fiscal year 2001 in Lubbock's FAA district.

In just over a year's time, following the moment in October when Foshee left behind a wife and two children, plus a father and brother to continue operating Foshee Flying Service without him, five pilots have perished in crop-dusting crashes.

Almost exactly 24 hours after LeClair crashed and died, John Wilson, 51, barely missed becoming the year's second spray-plane fatality.

Wilson was taken to Midland Memorial after the crash three miles northeast of Stanton that ripped his plane apart. He was reported in satisfactory condition Saturday. Wilson, also flying as part of the Boll Weevil Eradication program, also clipped power lines before his crash.

His Cessna 188 landed upside down.

Chief Deputy Randy Cozart of the Martin County Sheriff's Department said after Wilson's crash Thursday that he wished it would hurry up and freeze so the pilots didn't have to continue flying.

Cozart, thinking back to the most recent crop-dusting crash in Martin County, said Wilson was lucky to have survived.

Cozart didn't have to think back very far to remember the Sept. 29 crash that killed 28-year-old Robert Jennings.

Jennings, flying the exact same model plane as Wilson, also had been flying as part of the boll weevil program. According to reports, Jennings clipped a guy wire on a cellular phone tower and crashed into a field about four miles east of Stanton. He was pronounced dead at the scene.

Despite the death toll of crop dusters for the year, 63-year-old Arnold Patton, a pilot for Foshee Flying, said he probably will keep flying for a few more years until he retires.

Patton said he fell in love with flying when he was just a young boy. He would ride his bicycle as fast as he could while watching planes fly by.

Mohr and Hockett recounted similar tales that began their love affair with flying.

Patton said he's known about six people who have died in crop-dusting crashes. He was flying the day Foshee crashed, and said he thought, after circling above the wreckage, that Foshee had survived.

LeClair's former wife, Jackie LeClair of Mission, said Wednesday that during the couple's 22-year marriage, her husband had buried several friends who died in crashes.

Hockett, who has been flying since 1983, sheepishly admitted he has hit power lines twice this year.

Patton, known as one of the most careful and accurate pilots at Foshee Flying Service, said he also has clipped power lines. He has even had a few forced landings during his long career as a pilot.

But he has never crashed a plane.

''Not yet,'' he said.


