October 31, 2009

The lone survivor of Piedmont Airlines flight 349 which crashed on Buck’s Elbow Mountain near Crozet in 1959 spoke at a memorial service Saturday marking the 50th anniversary of the crash. The service at Mint Springs Park honored the 26 people who died when the plane went down on October 30, 1959.

Phil Bradley spent 36 hours in the wreckage of the plane too hurt to move before rescue crews finally found him. Five decades after that Bradley says he still wonders every day if he would have survived the crash if he had been sitting in a different seat.

Despite his ordeal he keeps a sense of humor about those dark hours he spent with buzzards staring at him on top of the mountain.

"I was on a diet so I guess I didn't miss food” said Phil Bradley. “I was really thirsty and I needed some water but, other than that I remember laying my head back trying to get water in my mouth. I figured with as big a mouth as mine I could get a big bucket full of water in there."

Family and friends of the victims of the crash came to Saturday’s memorial service. Bradley says the older her gets the more connected he feels to a plane full of strangers that he never knew. And he hopes the memorial at Mint Springs Park that he designed means other people will too for decades to come.