Monday, May 7, 2007

Mystery in the Woods...more

Why are these two people smiling when one of them has a broken foot? As Paul Harvey would say,” Now for the rest of the story.”

On Thursday, May 3rd, after lunch and a morning of turkey hunting Leonard Riehl had no idea the most interesting part of his day was yet to come. Carol Riehl, Leonard’s wife and her mother Kathryn Hand had heard about a plane crash site from Carol’s brother in the Tioga Forest as they explained this to Leonard he thought he knew where it was and they were off to find the plane.

The weather was perfect on the two mile walk back into the woods they saw a woodcock, a grouse and a turkey. When they reached the end of the logging road they looked around the entire turnaround and Carol spotted a small American Flag waving them toward the site.

April 26th, 1946, Captain Lawrence Ritter lost his life on a training mission from Detroit’s Selfridge Field to New York City. The Boys Scouts placed a plaque at the site in the Fall of 2000 to commemorate this veteran's service.

After viewing the wreckage Carol turned and walked back towards the logging path. All of the sudden she went down and snapped her ankle. It didn’t take long for Leonard to figure out his wife’s foot was broken and she wasn’t going to be able to walk the two miles out of the woods. He left his mother-in-law Kathryn with Carol and hiked out to his vehicle as fast as he could.

He stopped at my house, no one home; Mick’s house no one home, and the Jack Bonitz camp no one home. He then met another person on the road they encouraged him to just use Mick’s phone the door is always open. Leonard called 911 and in about 50 minutes they made it to Leetonia. He directed them up to the site where the forestry service unlocked the gate and started cutting trees out of the way to get the 4-wheelers through. Leonard says, “There was a funny part were all these guys were holding on to the 4-wheeler and they hit a bump, they all flew off.” Fortunately, none of them were hurt.

The sun had long departed and the girls were getting cold having dressed only for the warm Spring day. The army of rescuers arrived none too soon and collected Carol and Kathryn. They made their long trip by ambulance to the Williamsport Hospital. Carol has two broken bones and is awaiting surgery on her leg Wednesday. I asked her if it was worth it.

“No,” she said emphatically.

Of course after the leg is healed and the pain of the day forgotten, she will have a great story to tell about finding the crash of the P47 in Tioga Forest.

Leonard and Carol Riehl are both from Dayton, Ohio and have enjoyed coming to the woods of Tioga Forest for years.

I now have specific directions to the site and will be getting pictures as soon as I can get up there. So this story isn't over yet.

Special thanks to Alice Sommers for connecting me to the people in this story and Deb Finkbinder for telling me where they were staying.

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