Curtis Coulter, a retired Hamilton County educator, was 5 years old in 1954 when his father took him to see the wreckage of an airplane crash on Walden’s Ridge in Bledsoe County.
A twin-engine airplane carrying six people from Michigan to Florida that summer was forced down during a violent thunderstorm. Everyone on board was killed.
“It dug a hole about four- to six-feet deep and about the size of a large kitchen,” Coulter said.
Among the passengers was a 42-year-old business leader named Howard E. Anthony, the owner of the Heath Co. The catalog company was famous for its Heathkits, which featured assemble-at-home radios, amplifiers and, later, computers, among other electronic devices.