The Longest Flight Home

By Steve Scott Sr.

The miraculous recovery of a missing favorite son, Marlon Scott, lost in a plane crash with 51 crew members and passengers in the Alaskan Wilderness for more than 60 years...and the resultant closure it brought to one grieving family.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Jul 23, 2013
• ISBN: 9781481772655

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© 2013 by Steve Scott Sr.. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 07/11/2013

ISBN: 978-1-4817-7266-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4817-7265-5 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013912032

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CONTENTS

Dedication

Prologue

Plane Vanishes Into Thin Air—

The Awakening

Afdil

Marlon

North To The Alaskan Wilderness

Epilogue I

Epilogue Ii

About The Author

Acknowledgments

On the cover shows an undated photo of a United States

Air Force C-124A Globemaster Cargo aircraft, similar to

the plane that went down on the Colony Glacier in Alaska

in 1952, killing all on board (Courtesy U.S. Air Force)

DEDICATION

This book is dedicated to the memory of Airmen Marlon Lee Scott and all of the Scott family members, both living and deceased. It is with unremitting humility that I recognize the noblesse oblige of the responsibility they have entrusted me to be as sensitive and reverent in the telling of Marlon’s story.

Marlon%20Scott%20%20DEDICATION.JPG

It further recognizes, and is in sympathy with, the families of the other 10 crewmen and 41 passengers who lost their lives in the bleak Alaskan wilderness so long ago. May they each, in their own way, finally achieve the closure they so desperately sought for the past 60 years.

PROLOGUE

I feel compelled to write this short treatise, The Longest flight Home, for several reasons, perhaps none of which the average reader will find as engaging as the 52 families of long deceased loved ones, whose lives were lost when their aircraft seemingly disappeared into thin air in the remote wilderness of Alaska. Through the mist of time our story will chronicle the life of one of the missing airman, Marlon Lee Scott, son of long deceased parents, Lawrence Dowane and Violet Scott, from Lebanon, Indiana, who did not live long enough to experience final closure to the first loss of one of their twelve children.

Anyone who has suddenly—and without warning—lost a family member or loved one or know of a person who has vanished without a trace far, far back in time will appreciate the heart-wrenching nature of our story.

It seems that nearly every day one can read, or see on the television screen, a story of a child, a teenager or an adult who has gone missing in the blink of an eye. The emotional tendency for the reader or viewer is to briefly empathize with the bereaved loved ones for a moment, then return to other pressing matters that more directly affect their lives. But, for those most closely connected to the victim, haunting, philosophical questions and closure do not come that quickly. For the victims’ families questions become agonizingly personal.

What do you do when you have run out of tears, time and hope of ever finding the person and gaining some sense of closure to the tragedy?

The Scott family experienced such an event long ago. But that circumstance was about to change with the suddenness of switching on a light blub in a darkened room.

It all happened early on a lovely summer morning, just as the sun was starting its arching rise from heaven’s vault to begin its stately flight east to west. Then it happened.

Suddenly, and seemingly out of nowhere, came a startling phone call, a phone call bearing news that shocked one’s sensibilities, and the world.

The crash site of a military cargo plane had just been found at the foot of an Alaskan mountain. What is so amazing about the find is that its disappearance and crash location had remained a dark mystery for 60 years.

I would now ask the reader to suspend all incredulity and put yourself in Dreamtime.

Dreamtime can be described as a personal state of mind when everything within space and time is suspended. It is a state of mind in which you remain insulated against the hyper-fast urgency of everyday living, a Time when the past, no matter how pleasant or dreadful, is truly prologue and the Present is the only place in which you choose to be that is psychologically fulfilling.

That is the self-induced state I was in as we begin our story of The Longest Flight Home.

PLANE VANISHES INTO THIN AIR—

WHAT HAPPENED?

A PRESS RELEASE FROM ANCORAGE, ALASKA

November 20, 1952

A faint radio signal was the only tenuous clue today to the fate of 52 men aboard a giant C-124 Globemaster aircraft which vanished, Saturday night, over the Gulf of Alaska. Air Force Officials cautioned, however, against any undue optimism, pointing out that the signal was not picked up again, and past experiences in Alaskan air tragedies have shown that mysterious radio transmissions are not uncommon and have proved valueless in searches. Names of the crew, including Marlon L. Scott, Airman