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| BOBBY SHANE'S DEATH
July 1, 2003 – Dick Steinborn Fritz Von Erich brought me into the Dallas territory mainly to wrestle with his sons, and possibly bring some down-to-earth wrestling to the boys, who at that time were doing a lot of kicking and stomping. Gary Hart was my manager and Donn Lewin was my partner. One time when there was about four hours between a TV taping and a show that evening, Gary and I spent some time sitting in a park, where I asked him what happened in that fatal plane crash in 1975. Buddy Colt had about fifty hours under his belt and his three passengers consisting of Bobby Shane in the back seat along with Mike McCord, while Gary sat in the front right seat. They came in from Miami in thick fog, so thick you couldn’t see, and Colt was ordered to circle the field after overshooting the runway. Gary said that Buddy banked to the left and made a complete circle, but had forgot to turn a small wheel next to his right thigh, which would have allowed the small plane to keep its elevation. He said they didn’t know that the plane was descending all along. As they dropped out of the fog there were about two hundred feet of visibility, and the wing and plane now being flown sideways descended into the bay just short of the Tampa airport. The wing caught the water and the plane crashed. Gary told me he came loose out of the seat with his body sailing through the windshield, where the top of the plane had ripped his scalp. Hart told me that when he was a kid he used to jump off a quarry into the water, while one hand protected his groin and the other holding his nose. Hart went on to say that it was that instinct allowed him to repeat that same maneuver, as he flew almost two hundred feet and landed in the water. He was surprised that he was standing in four feet of water with blood pouring down from his forehead. Colt’s leg was smashed and disfigured, ending his career. McCord (who was wrestling as Austin Idol) injured his back. Bobby’s head hit the side of the plane and it knocked him out. Everyone got out but Bobby. My dad, who was promoting Orlando, drove over to see the plane the next day and told me he could not understand how anyone could have survived that crash. Sometime later I talked to Sonny King, who told me fifty hours was not enough experience, especially in the weather that they had run into. All in all it was a great loss to a personal friend of mine who got along very well in our business. |