The Knute Rockne Memorial Society of Kansas will commemorate the 90th Anniversary of the tragic airplane crash in the Flint Hills of Kansas that took the lives of former Notre Dame Head Football Coach Knute Rockne and seven other men.
The event will be conducted at 10 a.m., April 3 at the Chase County Historical Society Museum, 301 Broadway Street, Cottonwood Falls, Kan (approximately 8 miles north of the location of the crash). The actual date of the accident was March 31, 1931. The Fokker F-10 took off from Kansas City (Mo.) Municipal Airport bound for Los Angeles, with a stop in Wichita. Rockne had been in Kansas City to visit his sons, Bill and Knute Jr., who attended school at Pembroke Hill Academy.
The other men who perished with Rockne on that fateful day were Waldo Miller, H.J. Christen, John Happer, Spencer Goldthwaite, C.A. Robrecht, Robert Fry (the pilot) and Herman Mathias (the co-pilot).
The program will include remarks by Notre Dame graduate, Jerry McKenna, a world-renowned sculptor, who has created 11 Rockne sculptures and busts; Rockne's grandsons, Nils Rockne and Knute Rockne III; Notre Dame All-American football player, Reggie Brooks and Blair Kerkhoff, Hall of Fame Sportswriter with the Kansas City Star. Kerkhoff will deliver the keynote address.
Father Matt Nagle of Emporia State University and Father Paul Doyle of the University of Notre Dame will offer prayers at the event.
The late Easter Heathman, the man who took care of the Rockne Monument Site for 34 years and escorted over 800 visitors to the Site, will be honored with a video tribute. Click here to read a feature on Heathman and considerable ties between Rockne and the state of Kansas, written by Rick Plumlee of the Wichita Eagle in September of 1999.
The Knute Rockne Memorial Society of Kansas was established in 1932, a year following the death of Rockne by his close friend and fellow Notre Dame alum, Dr. D.M. Nigro of Kansas City. For several years, Dr. Nigro led an annual pilgrimage to the crash site on Rockne's Birthday (March 4). He also spearheaded efforts that resulted in a monument being placed at the crash site in 1935 and a memorial marker at the Matfield Green rest stop on the Kansas turnpike in 1965.
Beginning in 1991, Easter Heathman coordinated the effort of the Memorial Society to conduct an event every five years at the crash site monument.
