Grayson, Richard Lee

Funeral services for Richard Lee Grayson, killed in an airplane accident at Miami yesterday, will be held at the Methodist church at 2:30 o'clock Wednesday afternoon with the Rev. S. Y. Allgood in charge. Burial will be made in the G.A.R. cemetery at Miami under the direction of the Jack H. Todd funeral home. Pallbearers will be Clarence Vann, Bill Landreth, Bill Richardson, J. B. Kennedy, Arthur McFarren and Edgar Herron.

Two fliers lost lives...the dead are C. B. White, 33 years old, veteran flying instructor who came to this area three months ago from Tulsa Oklahoma, and Richard Grayson, 19, a zinc mill employee at the Rialto Mine, south of Picher Oklahoma and a student flier...White was believed killed instantly, while Grayson was believed to have died of severe burns received when flames enveloped the plane immediately after the crash. Airport manager Roy Seward, said they could not say definitely which one of the victims, or whether both had been operating the double control ship. ...Ernest Blagg...watched the crash from outside the hanger. "They were flying along level between 1,200 and 1,400 feet. The motor was cruising between 75 and 80 miles an hour, when the plane suddenly went off to the right and into a spin with the motor on. With the first half-turn of the spin, the throttle was closed. I had counted 11 turns in this spin and there must have been three more as it crashed. I rushed from the hanger to the point where the plane fell. It seemed nearly 30 seconds before flames enveloped the plane. Then about as I reached it the gasoline tank, which carried about 5 gallons, exploded. Fire spread everywhere at once, but airport attendants and volunteers fought it down with extinguishers." Grayson's body was nearly clear of the burning wreckage when Ernest Seward, a brother of the airport manager; Fred Wyrick and Hiram McBee, who reside near the airport, and Roy T. Wills, president of the First National bank reached the scene. Either Grayson had been jarred from the ship at the terrific impact of the crash, or had succeeded in partially escaping the fire which seared his entire body. ...Wyrick was burned slightly on one hand as he assisted in pulling Grayson away from the flames. All were driven back by the blaze when they attempted to reach White. White was in the front of the plane, apparently dead, as flames whipped about his body and led witnesses to the theory he had been killed instantly. Grayson, lifted into a Cooper ambulance, died at Miami Baptist hospital at 7 pm one hour and fifty minutes after the place fell. ...