Memorial at Great Park honors service members lost in military crash 50 years ago
Susan Deardorff, right, hugs a lifelong friend during the 50th Anniversary Memorial Dedication and remembrance to the servicemen killed in the crash of a C-135 Marine Corps plane that left El Toro Marine Corp Air Station in 1965 bound for Vietnam. At the time, Deardorff was married to her husband Alfred “Fred” Peterson for only two weeks when he was killed in the accident on Loma Ridge in Orange County at what was then the El Toro Marine Corp Air Station.
In the early summer of 1965, Susan Peterson was a June bride newly wed to a Marine. Within three weeks, she was a widow. Her daughter Lisa, born the next spring, would never meet her father, but she grew up knowing all about him.
Lance Cpl. Alfred “Fred” Peterson was among 84 U.S. service members – 72 Marines and 12 Air Force crew – killed when their Boeing C-135 transport plane crashed into a mountain moments after takeoff from El Toro Marine Corps Air Station on a foggy night early on June 25, 1965. It remains the worst aviation disaster in Orange County history.
“My mother always kept in touch with his family. I visited my (paternal) grandmother every summer. We were part of his family, and it just always was,” said Lisa Hollingsworth, 49, a Yorba Linda resident who grew up as Lisa Peterson. Her mother, now Susan Deardorff, remarried when Hollingsworth was 2.
“As long as I can remember, [my mom] always told me about my dad,” Hollingsworth said. “I always asked my two aunts about him growing up.”
Hollingsworth, now a married mother of two sons who are about the age her father was when he died, prepared this past week to join her sons, her mother and hundreds of others on Saturday at the Orange County Great Park in Irvine for the dedication of a memorial to those lost on the flight 50 years ago. The park now occupies the site of the former air station, which closed in 1999.
The permanent memorial at the Great Park Heritage and Aviation Exhibition is an interactive kiosk designed as an Eagle Scout project by 15-year-old Jordan Fourchet of Newport Beach.
“Originally it was going to be a rock in a park,” said Jordan, a student at Corona del Mar High School. But after researching the history and recognizing the impact the tragedy had on so many people, he stepped up his effort. He came up with the high-tech kiosk displaying the names of all 84 victims and a digital touch screen offering details of the event.
“It turned into something with a little bit more meaning to me,” Jordan said. “It’s not just a project now – it’s a connection.”
Jordan described the difficulty of bringing his concept to reality, from getting city permits to researching military records from a half-century ago. He and his mother, Audrina, worked tirelessly to be certain the memorial display would be 100% accurate.
“It’s really hard to get documents. They’re just not available; things weren’t digital in 1965,” Audrina Fourchet said. Documents either were classified or simply lost, she said. Media reports from the time couldn’t be counted on for complete accuracy.
“The names are spelled correctly,” Jordan said with confidence. “Me and my mom went over that many, many, many times.”
“Jordan is a Scout extraordinaire, very sharp,” said G. Pat Macha, a retired high school history and geography teacher from Mission Viejo who suggested the memorial as a Scout project. “[Jordan] really came up with a plan that was much more complicated than I envisioned.”
Macha, 69, has no military background but described his interest as one of a “grateful citizen of the republic.” He has advocated for memorials through his organization Project Remembrance and operates the website Aircraftwrecks.com.
One of the memorial’s most satisfying aspects for surviving family members is the recognition that the crash victims were denied in Washington, D.C. The doomed flight was destined for Okinawa, Japan, where the Marines were scheduled for jungle training before deployment to Vietnam. Because the crash occurred on U.S. soil, the service members were not classified as killed in action and their names do not appear on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial wall.
“We all have expressed how these men are finally getting the honor and the respect they deserve,” Hollingsworth said. “They were sacrificing their lives and they went willingly. We’re just so thrilled that they’re not going to be forgotten.”
With many relatives of the victims arriving in Southern California from around the country, including her mother from Indiana, Hollingsworth spearheaded an effort to allow family members to visit the crash site, in a protected nature preserve. Permission from U.S. parks officials for such visits has been difficult to get, with only a few known visits to the site in five decades.
But on Thursday, the 50th anniversary of the crash, three dozen of the victims’ relatives visited the site at Loma Ridge for the first time. Many had tried for years to gain access.
Jordan, his parents and Macha accompanied the group to the top of the ridge. After an hour of reflection and prayer, relatives left 84 small white stones, each marked with a victim’s name.
“The people there were very emotional. It was intense,” Jordan said after meeting the family members for the first time. “There were a lot of hugs.”
“What’s really great about it is that it’s touched so many people with such significance,” added Fred Fourchet, Jordan’s father, who helped with the memorial project. “This one really touched me, being up there on the ridge and seeing all the family members. It really gave them a sense of closure on this horrific tragedy.”
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