Sadie Burkhalter of New Hope, Georgia, will never forget the day that a plane carrying 81 passengers and four crew members crashed in front of her house. The plane had hit ground about a mile away and skidded to her front yard, taking out cars, power lines, and gas station pumps along the way.
On Monday, April 4, 1977, Sadie was a young mother of three boys living in the small community of New Hope, Georgia. That lovely spring afternoon, she stood in her living room and witnessed a scene almost out of a horror film. A man was running across her front yard toward her, frantically waving his arms, his clothing ablaze. Behind him, downed electrical wires snaked around charred bodies. A traumatized young man with red hair and badly burned hands had taken refuge in the yellow Cadillac parked in Sadie’s driveway. Another man, engulfed in flames, was running blindly toward the creek behind her house. In the midst of it all, a shimmering blue line painted on a fragment of metal was all that remained to identify the mangled fuselage of a Southern Airways DC-9-31 passenger plane that had just crashed into the Burkhalters’ quiet front yard.
Crash survivors, injured, burned, and desperate for help, made their way to Burkhalter's home for refuge. The final death toll was 63 from the plane (including both pilots) and nine on the ground. Read an account of what Burkhalter saw that day from Samme Chittum, author of the book Southern Storm: The Tragedy of Flight 242 at Smithsonian.