The new 31,500-square-foot Hillsborough County Medical Examiner complex has its grand opening Thursday. ...more

February 25, 2009

An overflow crowd jammed the Memorial United Methodist Church Sanctuary last Wednesday to pay respects to Mason Smoak, who died in an airplane crash June 20. There were so many people there that the Lake Placid church had to use its Fellowship Hall to accommodate all of them. According to the Highlands County Sheriff's Office, a 1989 fixed wing, single engine, two-seater Piper Cub was returning to the Placid Lakes Airport and crashed near the south end of the runway. Smoak, who was the pilot of the airplane at the time of crash, and his passenger, Dave Maehr, died at the scene. Smoak and Maehr were conducting aerial surveys of black bears in Highlands County. Maehr was a visiting scientist at Archold Biological Station while on sabbatical from the University of Kentucky. ...more

June 29, 2008

On June 20, there was an airplane crash at Placid Lakes Airport involving Mason Smoak and his passenger David Maehr. In December 1941, Pilot officer John G. Magee, Jr., a 19-year-old American serving with the Royal Canadian Air Force in England, was killed when his Spitfire collided with another aircraft inside a cloud. Several months before his death, he composed his immortal sonnet, "High Flight," a copy of which he fortunately mailed to his parents in the United States. This is the poem quoted in President Ronald Reagan's speech after the Challenger disaster. Here is John Gillespie Magee Jr.'s sonnet in hopes that it will be of some small comfort to the Smoak family and the entire community during this time of grief. ...more

June 23, 2008

TAMPA - No cause is provided, but the National Transportation Safety Board today released a report on the North Carolina plane crash that killed the Rev. Forrest Pollock of Brandon and his 13-year-old son, Preston. ...more

May 22, 2008

A popular and charismatic pastor of an evangelical Baptist church dies in an airplane crash. He was flying a single-engine Piper airplane with his 13-year old son at his side. There are front-page headlines and grief throughout the community. It is a sad story. But it is a tragedy that should not have occurred. ...more

May 20, 2008

Edward Kennedy, a liberal Democratic icon of the Senate and the surviving patriarch of American political royalty, suffered a seizure Saturday at his home in Hyannis Port, Mass., and was rushed by helicopter to Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, hospital officials said. ...more

May 18, 2008

Candace Parker scored a season-high 34 points and Alexis Hornbuckle added 17 to help top-ranked Tennessee (8-0) to an 84-61 win against Middle Tennessee (3-5) on Thursday night. ...more

December 14, 2007

A casual conversation with a friend about an airplane crash was the inspiration for a novel that has become a holiday movie debuting Saturday on the Hallmark Channel. ...more

December 6, 2007