<\/div>\nAnd the other was the humble son of a \u201ctruck gardener\u201d<\/a>\u00a0from Wheeling, West Virginia.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
Charles A. Robrecht, Sr. \u00a0was born in rural Ohio County five months after the end of the Civil War. Sixty-five years later on that fateful day of March 31, 1931, he was founder and president of the C.A. Robrecht produce company, one of the largest wholesale grocers in the state, headquartered at 1910 Main Street, just off the southeast corner of the Main Street stone arch bridge<\/a>, across Wheeling Creek from the current Boury Lofts.<\/p>\n
$\"C.$ <\/a>
C. A. Robrecht Wholesale Fruits and Vegetables, 1910 Main St., Wheeling, W. Va. Courtesy the Personal Collection of B. McKibben.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
Deathly afraid of flying, Robrecht was about to board an airplane for the first time in his life.<\/p>\n
Sadly, his granddaughter Marguerita had died of influenza (a different strain from the infamous 1918 virus<\/a>)\u00a0in Amarillo, Texas, and her funeral was the next day. Furthermore, Robrecht\u2019s daughter Marguerita, in Amarillo to visit her sister Regina (the child\u2019s mother), had caught the flu from her niece and namesake, and was herself in critical condition, increasing Robrecht\u2019s need for haste. He needed to get there as quickly as possible, and friends convinced him to fly.<\/p>\n
Robrecht\u2019s company manager, Joseph Klug, drove his boss to the airport in Columbus for an afternoon flight aboard the Transcontinental Transport Western Air Express, a tri-motor, ten-passenger plane. At the first stopover in Kansas City, Kansas, Robrecht wired Klug that he was actually enjoying the flight.<\/p>\n
\n
<\/div>\n
$\""C.$ <\/a>
\u201cC. A. Robrecht, Knute Rockne Are Killed When Air Liner Crashes,\u201d Wheeling Intelligencer, April 1, 1931.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
The plane took off for Witchita in \u201cmuggy\u201d weather marred by clouds and fog. \u00a0Eyewitnesses at the farming village of Bazaar reported seeing the plane bank sharply and lose a wing before sputtering then plunging through the clouds, crashing thunderously, bolting a nearby group of grazing cattle.<\/p>\n
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The force of the impact drove one of the engines so deeply into a hillside that a team of horses was needed to extract it so that three bodies could be recovered. The remaining bodies were strewn across the field. The detached wing landed a half a mile away.<\/p>\n
$\""Uncensored!$ <\/a>
\u201cUncensored! Truth About Rockne\u2019s Strange Death!\u201d \u2013 Drawing detailing the airplane crash that killed Knute Rockne and others, c1930s. Courtesy University of Notre Dame Archives.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
The nascent industry of commercial flight had experienced one of the worst accidents in its brief history.<\/p>\n
\n
Coincidence One: The Rockne-Robrecht Connection<\/h2>\n
$\"Portrait$ <\/a>
Portrait of C. A. Robrecht (by George Kossuth) as printed in the Wheeling Intelligencer, April 1, 1931.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
Robrecht was a devout Catholic and a member of St. Michael\u2019s Parish. His wife, Theresa Stenger Robrecht, had died three years prior to the crash. In addition to the two daughters in Amarillo, the Robrechts were survived by daughter Theresa (who lived at home) and son Charles A. Jr. of Elizabeth, New Jersey, where he was a chemical engineer for the Standard Oil Company<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Though the senior Robrecht had never met Knute Rockne, and had boarded the plane with him at Kansas City purely by happenstance, Robrecht Jr. had once been a chemistry professor at Notre Dame, where he had reportedly become a personal friend of the famous football coach. Indeed, according to the Notre Dame Alumnus<\/em> publication of May 1931, Rockne had earned a degree in science from Notre Dame where he, \u201cturned to the teaching of chemistry.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n
Coincidence Two: A Nearby Friend<\/h2>\n
$\"Jess$ <\/a>
Jess Harper and Knute Rockne. Courtesy University of Notre Dame Football.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
Before Knute Rockne took over the Notre Dame football program in 1917, a man named Jess Harper<\/a> had guided the team for four seasons, leading the squad to its first signature victory over the powerful Black Knights of the Hudson in 1913<\/a>. One of Harper\u2019s star players, who helped perfect the perplexing and innovative forward pass that brought down the mighty Army club, was a young end named Knute Rockne.<\/p>\n
The two men became lifelong friends.<\/p>\n
When Rockne took over the head coaching job, Harper retired to his ranch in Kansas, about 100 miles from a certain nondescript farm field in Bazaar, where, 14 years later, Harper\u2019s comrade Knute Rockne would plunge to his death in a one-winged airplane.<\/p>\n
Knowing the two were friends, authorities called upon Harper to identify Rockne\u2019s remains.<\/p>\n
\n
Coincidence Three: A Fokker Wing Fails<\/h2>\n
Though early speculation had the wing detachment being caused by ice, subsequent investigations determined that accumulated moisture had weakened the glue that held the wood-framed wing to the body of the plane, causing it to detach. \u00a0These investigations were hampered by Rockne\u2019s fame, as unscrupulous fans raided the crash site for souvenirs, removing evidence vital to determining what happened to the plane.<\/p>\n
$\"Bystanders$ <\/a>
Bystanders gather around the detached F-10A wing. Source unknown<\/em>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
But the plane had a reputation. According to a 1997 book published by the Smithsonian, \u201cpilots said they were actually afraid to fly the F-10A. Its wings tended to flutter badly in turbulent weather, making the aircraft very difficult to keep under control. But the pilots had remained silent about the problem for fear of losing their jobs.\u201d<\/p>\n
$\""A$ <\/a>
\u201cA tri-motored Fokker monoplane like the one which crashed in Kansas killing Knute Rockne and seven fellow air travelers,\u201d Daily News, New York, April 1, 1931<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
The plane was specifically criticized for using glue to attach the wings.<\/p>\n
Most locals are familiar with the Fokker plant in Glen Dale<\/a>. But Fokker also operated a New Jersey factory. Where was this particular plane manufactured?<\/p>\n
Again, according to the Smithsonian source:<\/p>\n
\u201cthe F-10A wing was the first to be built at the Glen Dale production plant in West Virginia. Bayard Young, a Fokker employee at Glen Dale, hired as an apprentice woodworker in July 1928, described the wing assembly: \u2018The spars were assembled by glued and nailing ribs between the flanges at specified intervals\u2026 Graduated thicknesses of plywood were glued on each face of the spar. They were given final form by planing away the surplus wood with jack planes. A crew of six to ten did this work, working to plus or minus one thirty-second inch which is rather exacting when working with wood.\u2019 Here, one of Fokker\u2019s eternal production problems came up: quality control. The Fokker wings, depending as much on gluing as they did, demanded absolute perfection and the highest degree of craftsmanship. Yet the Glen Dale plant was set up to boost local employment and hired woodworkers from the Wheeling area who were unaccustomed to the exacting nature of aircraft construction. The findings indicated that the one thirty-second-of-an-inch margin was, perhaps, not always achieved at Glen Dale, which may have explained the \u2018peculiar glue conditions\u2019 and the lack of cohesion found in the wing of the Rockne plane.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Fokker\u2019s Glen Dale plant closed in October of 1931.<\/p>\n
The high-profile crash, and Fokker\u2019s role in it, helped bring an end to the\u00a0Fokker Aircraft Company and to the career of Tony Fokker as an aircraft designer.<\/p>\n
Furthermore, a Wheeling man died far from home because an airplane wing crafted in Glen Dale by Wheeling woodworkers, failed at a crucial moment over a Kansas field.<\/p>\n
Yet that cloudy day in March 1931 had a silver lining: in the end, it brought national attention to airplane safety. Without the celebrity of Rockne, the needed changes might have taken several more years and a lot more lives.<\/p>\n
\n
Two Funerals<\/h2>\n
Needless to say, coach Knute Rockne\u2019s death drew somewhat greater attention than that of grocer Charles A. Robrecht.<\/p>\n
In excess of 100,000 people lined the route of Rockne\u2019s funeral procession. His funeral service was broadcast internationally on radio. \u00a0A statue of Rockne was erected in Voss Norway, where he was born (he immigrated at age 5). A film called Knute Rockne, All American<\/em>, starring Pat O\u2019Brien, was released in 1940.<\/p>\n
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Meanwhile, a quiet wake was held for Robrecht at his Oak Park home. Following a funeral Mass at St. Michael\u2019s Church, he was interred at Mt. Calvary Cemetery.<\/p>\n
A rosary was reportedly found in the field near the bodies at Bazaar. It\u2019s easy to imagine Robrecht, the devout Catholic afraid of flying, clutching his rosary as the airplane sputtered.<\/p>\n
Whatever their differences and whatever the differences in their respective memorials, Robrecht and Rockne are forever linked by an ill-fated flight and a series of rather fascinating coincidences.<\/p>\n
$\"Rockne$ <\/a>
This memorial in the Bazaar Kansas field was maintained for many years by James Heathman, who was among the first people to reach the crash site in 1931. He was 13 at the time.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\n
Sources<\/em><\/h3>\n
Dierikx, M. L. J., Fokker: a transatlantic biography<\/em>. 1997. Smithsonian History Of Aviation Series.<\/p>\n
Notre Dame Alumnu<\/em>s, May 1931.<\/p>\n
Wheeling Intelligencer<\/em>, March 31, April 1, April 2, April 4, and April 8, 1931.<\/p>\n<\/body>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
-Written by Se\u00e1n P. Duffy with research by Erin Rothenbuehler Notre Dame and Wheeling Linked by Tragedy Eighty-nine years ago today, on March 31, 1931, a Transcontinental & Western Air Fokker F-10 commercial wood-frame airplane crashed in a remote cow<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8499,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[40,6],"tags":[243,185,1011,1015,539,993,1016,1012,1018,1013,1020,1014,1017,1019,1021],"coauthors":[310,313,312],"class_list":["post-8469","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archiving-wheeling","category-contributor-ocpl","tag-aviation","tag-disasters","tag-fokker","tag-fokker-airplane-company","tag-football","tag-influenza","tag-jess-harper","tag-knute-rockne","tag-main-street-bridge","tag-notre-dame","tag-robrecht","tag-robrecht-produce-company","tag-st-michaels-church","tag-the-spirit-of-notre-dame","tag-truck-gardener"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.archivingwheeling.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/AW-2020-03-31_FI.png?fit=738%2C355&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5pkc7-2cB","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.archivingwheeling.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8469","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.archivingwheeling.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.archivingwheeling.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.archivingwheeling.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.archivingwheeling.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8469"}],"version-history":[{"count":63,"href":"https:\/\/www.archivingwheeling.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8469\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8559,"href":"https:\/\/www.archivingwheeling.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8469\/revisions\/8559"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.archivingwheeling.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8499"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.archivingwheeling.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8469"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.archivingwheeling.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8469"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.archivingwheeling.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8469"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.archivingwheeling.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=8469"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}