PARTY ON MARCH TO DEATH PLANE
Six Lives Snuffed Out In Alaska Crash.
Bodies Of Lou Ann Markle's Parents In Wreck; Two Of Victims Women.
ANCHORAGE, Alaska, Sept. 3 (AP) -- Nine woodsmen, three airplane pilots, an aeronautics inspector and a doctor toiled up a 2000-foot ridge in the Skilak lake region of central Kenai peninsula today to recover the bodies of four men and two women who were killed in an airplane crash Sunday. In loss of life it was the worst Alaskan airplane tragedy recorded here.
The plane, piloted by Steve Mills, Seattle flying instructor, was sighted from the air yesterday, a four-mile hike from the nearest landing place. Fliers said the motor had thrust itself back into the fuselage and that the pontoons were smashed.
Cause of the accident was undermined from the air but it was known there was thick weather in the district when Mills hopped Sunday to take this five passengers on a one-day fishing jaunt.
Two Victims Barbers
The passengers all of Anchorage, were:
Mr. and Mrs. George Markle, parents of 10-year-old Lou Ann Markle, patient in a Portland, Or., hospital, whose maternal grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. Edward R. Hayssen, Portland, "just had to tell her mother and daddy won't be back for a long time." The child is suffering a severe bone infection.
Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence Davis.
Augustus Teik.
Teik and David were barbers; Markle an ALaska railroad employe.
Mr. and Mrs. Davis came here from Seattle last April 1. They had no children. Teik arrived last November from Excelsior, Minn., where he had been a farmer and barber. Enthusiastic over fishing and hunting opportunities in Alaska, he had been amking airplane fishing trips almost every week-end this season.
Rescue Camp Set Up.
Mrs. Davis was the daughter of Mrs. Marie Jensen, Aberdeen, Wash. Davis has a cousin, Howard W. Neelans, in Seattle, where the Davises lived the past ten years.
Mills, widely known Alaskan "mercy flyer," leaves a widow and two children here.
Mrs. Markle, 35, an Anchorage beauty operator, leaves her parents, four brothers, Maurice Hayseen, Seneca Falls, N. Y. and two in Portland -- and a sister, Mrs. Dorothy Hart, Bremerton, Wash.
Led by Elmer Simco, oldtime Kenai peninsula trapper and prospector, the rescue party -- including Dr. A. W. Walkowski, Anchorage hospital staff, Pilots Kenneth Neese, Al Horning, Jack Elliott and Aeronautics Inspector Hugh Brewster -- late yester established a base camp at a small lake near Skilak lake. They oprated from there today with four woodsmen flown in from Seward by Horning last evening and five more he obtained today.