Memorials › AVC Rafel Lendon Cooper
AVC Rafel Lendon Cooper
10 Jul 1917 – 14 Jun 1943
| Birth | 10 Jul 1917 |
| Death | 14 Jun 1943 |
| Cemetery | Athens City Cemetery Athens , Limestone County , Alabama , USA |
| Added by | Mary Jo on 17 Aug 2008 |
| FaG | https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/24147809 |
Bio
Aviation Cadet, 730th Navigator Training School, Selman Field, Louisiana. Flying aboard Beech AT-7 Navigator #42-2469, in a group of eleven other AT-7's and four C-60 Lodestar transports on a navigational training flight, the formation split up to avoid a string of thunderstorms as they approached Hammond, Louisiana. AT-7 #42-2469 inadvertently entered one of the thunder cells and exploded and crashed, killing all five airmen aboard. The aircraft may have been struck by lightning, or may have disintegrated from intense weather forces, leading to an explosion. Killed were: 2LT Alvin R Grossman , O-803810, NJ, Pilot 2LT Stanley P Dabrowski , O-797277, NY, Navigator Instructor AVC Francis G Conway , 20247943, NY, Student Navigator AVC Rafel L Cooper , 14077553, AL, Student Navigator AVC Robert E Cooper , 16030908, IL, Student Navigator ~ Published in the Limestone Democrat, Athens, Alabama, Thursday, June 17, 1943. Funeral services will be held tomorrow (Friday) afternoon for Aviation Cadet Rafel L. Cooper of Elkmont who died in the mid-air explosion of a twin-engine navigation training plane near Hammond, Louisiana., Monday morning. Also killed in the crash were two officers and two cadets from Selman Field, Louisiana, where the men and plane were based. Few details of the tragedy were available at Elkmont, but Jesse Evans, father-in-law, of the 26-year-old cadet, said that the plane apparently exploded in mid-air during a storm. Cooper had been in the U.S. Army Air Corps since Feb. 11, 1943, but before that had been at the University of Notre Dame in the Navy's flight program. The cadet's remains will arrive in Athens on L&N train No. 2 this (Thursday) afternoon and be carried to McConnell Funeral Home, later being taken to Elkmont, where services will be conducted at 2 o'clock Friday afternoon from the Methodist church, Rev. John E. Marion, pastor of the Cullman Baptist Church officiating, assisted by Rev. S. L. Prickett, pastor of the Elkmont church. Interment will be made in the Athens City Cemetery, the following acting as pallbearers: W. A. Owens, J. C. Chisholm, Roy Tucker, Hollis Tucker, Glenn Holland, Wm. D. Jones Jr., Homer Coffman and Claude Wood. Young Cooper was a native of Crane Hill, Cullman County, but for three years prior to entering the Armed Forces was a teacher and athletic director at West Limestone High School. It was while there that he met and married, on June 28, 1942, Miss Ruth Evans of Elkmont. In addition to his widow, [Ruth Evans Cooper] who was at Monroe, Louisiana., near Selman Field when the tragedy occurred, his parents, Mr. and Mrs. W. O. Cooper, of Crane Hill and a brother, Wendell Cooper, stationed with the Army's Medical Corps at Ft. McPherson, Georgia, also survive. *After Rafel's death, his widow, Ruth, remarried on December 10, 1944 in Memphis, TN, to St. Sgt. Luther E. Wright. She is buried in Georgia with her 2nd husband.
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