-Written by Seán 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 pasture near Bazaar, Kansas. All eight people on board, including six passengers and two pilots, were killed.
The tragedy included a series of coincidences that forever united the fates of two very different men.
One was legendary Notre Dame football coach, Knute Rockne, who was killed on his way to Hollywood to participate in the production of the film The Spirit of Notre Dame.
And the other was the humble son of a “truck gardener” from Wheeling, West Virginia.
Charles A. Robrecht, Sr. was 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, across Wheeling Creek from the current Boury Lofts.
Deathly afraid of flying, Robrecht was about to board an airplane for the first time in his life.
Sadly, his granddaughter Marguerita had died of influenza (a different strain from the infamous 1918 virus) in Amarillo, Texas, and her funeral was the next day. Furthermore, Robrecht’s daughter Marguerita, in Amarillo to visit her sister Regina (the child’s mother), had caught the flu from her niece and namesake, and was herself in critical condition, increasing Robrecht’s need for haste. He needed to get there as quickly as possible, and friends convinced him to fly.
Robrecht’s 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.
The plane took off for Witchita in “muggy” weather marred by clouds and fog. Eyewitnesses 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.
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.
The nascent industry of commercial flight had experienced one of the worst accidents in its brief history.
Coincidence One: The Rockne-Robrecht Connection
Robrecht was a devout Catholic and a member of St. Michael’s 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.
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 publication of May 1931, Rockne had earned a degree in science from Notre Dame where he, “turned to the teaching of chemistry.”
Coincidence Two: A Nearby Friend
Before Knute Rockne took over the Notre Dame football program in 1917, a man named Jess Harper 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. One of Harper’s 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.
The two men became lifelong friends.
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’s comrade Knute Rockne would plunge to his death in a one-winged airplane.
Knowing the two were friends, authorities called upon Harper to identify Rockne’s remains.
Coincidence Three: A Fokker Wing Fails
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. These investigations were hampered by Rockne’s fame, as unscrupulous fans raided the crash site for souvenirs, removing evidence vital to determining what happened to the plane.
But the plane had a reputation. According to a 1997 book published by the Smithsonian, “pilots 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.”
The plane was specifically criticized for using glue to attach the wings.
Most locals are familiar with the Fokker plant in Glen Dale. But Fokker also operated a New Jersey factory. Where was this particular plane manufactured?
Again, according to the Smithsonian source:
“the 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: ‘The spars were assembled by glued and nailing ribs between the flanges at specified intervals… 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.’ Here, one of Fokker’s 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 ‘peculiar glue conditions’ and the lack of cohesion found in the wing of the Rockne plane.”
Fokker’s Glen Dale plant closed in October of 1931.
The high-profile crash, and Fokker’s role in it, helped bring an end to the Fokker Aircraft Company and to the career of Tony Fokker as an aircraft designer.
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.
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.
Two Funerals
Needless to say, coach Knute Rockne’s death drew somewhat greater attention than that of grocer Charles A. Robrecht.
In excess of 100,000 people lined the route of Rockne’s funeral procession. His funeral service was broadcast internationally on radio. A statue of Rockne was erected in Voss Norway, where he was born (he immigrated at age 5). A film called Knute Rockne, All American, starring Pat O’Brien, was released in 1940.
Meanwhile, a quiet wake was held for Robrecht at his Oak Park home. Following a funeral Mass at St. Michael’s Church, he was interred at Mt. Calvary Cemetery.
A rosary was reportedly found in the field near the bodies at Bazaar. It’s easy to imagine Robrecht, the devout Catholic afraid of flying, clutching his rosary as the airplane sputtered.
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.
Sources
Dierikx, M. L. J., Fokker: a transatlantic biography. 1997. Smithsonian History Of Aviation Series.
Notre Dame Alumnus, May 1931.
Wheeling Intelligencer, March 31, April 1, April 2, April 4, and April 8, 1931.
Would like more story posted
Didn’t know a wheeling man killed
with famous coach.
Well done piece and researched. Enjoyed it very much.