One Man's Anguish

At 7:49 p.m. on Oct. 30, 1959, Piedmont Airlines' Flight 349 took off from Washington and headed for Charlottesville, Va. Fifty-one minutes later, with his flaps down for a landing at Charlottesville airport, Pilot George Lavrinc crashed the DC-3 into Bucks Elbow Mountain, 13 miles to the west. Killed were 26 of the 27 persons aboard, including Lavrinc.

How did it happen? Piecing together the answer, 37 investigators for the Civil Aeronautics Board tracked down lead after lead for 17 months. Last week, submitting its report, the CAB unfolded a story of one man's anguish--and a long buildup to tragedy.

One Mistake. At first the CAB men checked out the mechanical variables. They pored into the history of the 15-year-old plane, found it sound. They recovered its engines and much of its navigational gear, gave them a clean bill. They ran 25 hours of test flights and landings in the Charlottesville area, scrutinizing the ground control stations. Finally they decided that mechanical failure had not caused the crash.

After a painstaking search, the CAB located several witnesses who had heard the plane. Their accounts, plus the flight log and messages from plane to ground, pointed to one conclusion: Captain Lavrinc had been flying off course for 30 minutes, or since the time he had cruised over the "Casanova" control point. There he was scheduled to make a 20DEG left turn. Instead he continued on a death course. From then on, the investigation centered on Pilot George Lavrinc, 32, and his private life.

Two Loves. Lavrinc had two loves: his flying and his family. Son of a Pennsylvania pipe fitter, he was schooled in Navy radar in World War II, later went to the airlines as a ground communications man. In 1948, while working with the Panagra line in South America, Lavrinc met and married brunette Bonnie Maupin, a Braniff Airways reservations girl. He diligently took flying lessons on his own, qualified as a copilot with Piedmont in 1951, advanced to captain six years later.

Then George Lavrinc's life began to fall apart. He had two children whom he adored, but his marriage was breaking up. When Piedmont transferred Lavrinc to Washington, he left his wife and children in Norfolk. Always a thoughtful man, he turned more and more to religion. He joined the fundamentalist Cherrydale Independent Baptist Church in Arlington, attended Sunday services, Bible study classes, prayer meetings, and kept a diary in which he recorded his deepest religious feelings. Before the end of 1957, he filed suit for divorce, charging that Bonnie Lavrinc had "manifested interest in other men." Bonnie filed a cross-suit charging cruelty and desertion; she won her suit and took custody of Nadine, now 10, and George, 8.

In the passing months, Lavrinc kept up his flying (he had logged a total of 5,101 hours before his death) and his purposeful dedication to religion. He worked with alcoholics, tried to convert a Roman Catholic, helped conduct services at a local jail, plunged into the Youth for Christ movement. He lived for a time with fundamentalist families, later moved into a trailer park. Most of all, he longed for his children. Says a friend, recalling how Lavrinc had missed his daughter: "He said he had always wanted a little blonde-headed girl, and now that he had her, he couldn't be with her."

Three Pressures. In the fall of 1958, not long before the divorce decree became final, Lavrinc enrolled in the Washington Bible College. The pressures of study, family worries and flying were growing. He complained of headaches, was operated on for a sinus condition. He spoke of a reconciliation with his wife--if only he could bring her to religious ways. A solution, he thought, would be to become a flying missionary in South America and to take his family there. He even asked Piedmont for a two-year leave of absence so that he could train for the work.

Four Tranquilizers. Then, unaccountably, his religious ardor changed. He gave up his studies at the Bible college. "Minnie," he said to a friend, "I don't know what the Lord wants me to do. I don't know where he wants me to go, but I wish he'd hurry. I'm raring to go." He consulted psychiatrists, and one tried him out on four different kinds of tranquilizers, finally put him on Prozine (dosage: three to four pills per day). For a few months he seemed to be in fine spirits; he bought a set of golf clubs, talked enthusiastically to his fellow pilots about going hunting. Before the crash, Lavrinc made a final, exultant entry in his diary: "Thank God! Victory at last."

CAB investigators found no residues of the tranquilizers in Lavrinc's body. But they said that any crew member who needs tranquilizers should be grounded. "Captain Lavrinc," said the CAB, "was so heavily burdened with mental and emotional problems that he should have been relieved of the strain of flight duty while undergoing treatment for his condition." For the first time in aviation history, an official CAB report said of a crash: "A contributing factor to the accident may have been preoccupation of the captain resulting from mental stress."

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