Crash
kills passenger and pilot
By Anne Paine and Dorren
Klausnitzer / Staff Writers
Several Germantown
residents poured out of
their homes and
businesses yesterday and
tried to help two men
whose vintage airplane
crashed through the
treetops, skidded across
a lawn and smacked
against an unoccupied
triplex on Fifth Avenue
North.
Both men died.
Rick Loudermilk, 52, Old Hickory
Boulevard, Nashville, who owned a
software/computer programming business,
was pronounced dead at the scene. Photographer
and musician Stephen Paul Canaday, 55, Parthenon
Avenue, Nashville, was dead on arrival at Meharry
General Hospital after the accident, which happened
right before 11 a.m.
No one on the ground was injured. The cause was
still undetermined last night. Officials were trying to
determine who was piloting the North American
SNJ-5 World War II-era, single-engine trainer plane.
Startled witnesses stretching from a downtown
highrise to Broadway watched on the clear day as the
plane took a right turn over Bicentennial Capitol Mall,
dipped in a spiral, pulled up and then nose-dived into
the historic neighborhood.
"I knew it couldn't make that turn," said Jerry
McDowell, 31, who was driving over Jefferson Street
Bridge at the time.
"It hit the trees and you see bushes and leaves scatter
everywhere."
The plane, which took off from Nashville International
Airport, may have turned originally to allow
photographs.
"The pilot had a photographer and was doing some
low-level work," said Keith Stem, Federal Aviation
Administration investigator.
While Loudermilk was signed on as the pilot, officials
last night said that type of plane could be flown from
the back or front seat and they weren't certain who
had control at the time.
"We've got a lot of questions to ask," Stem said. "We
don't have any clue as to whether it was a mechanical
problem or pilot error."
Camera equipment pulled from the wreckage could
provide some answers when the film is developed.
The propeller-driven plane, at least one wing shorn
off and left dangling in a hackberry tree, skimmed the
top of Jack and Dolores London's garage and
knocked an air conditioner off its base before it came
to rest against a building next door to them on Fifth
Avenue North, between Monroe and Taylor streets.
"I heard the 'womp' when it hit, then another 'womp'
and it slid into the house next door," said Dolores
London, 65. Her husband is a former Metro
councilman.
The plane cut a swath through the trees, leaving bits
of cable on the ground and a piece of a wing in a
garden. Rammed up against the building, the tail
section, painted grey with blue and white stripes,
jutted out from a tangle of metal and debris.
The neighborhood jumped into action. London got
her garden hose and people began spraying the plane
to keep down the fire that had begun.
Neighbor Wayne Woelk heard one of the men,
Canaday, who was conscious and moaning in the
back seat.
"I reached in and unstrapped him and pulled him out,"
Woelk said.
He was bleeding from a long cut on his leg, Woelk
said. He tried to undo Loudermilk's safety belt.
"I couldn't unbuckle him," Woelk said.
Steff Mahan, who ran from behind her home on Fifth
Avenue North, said she didn't know what to do at
first.
But another neighbor who is a nurse started with CPR
on Canaday, and Mahan helped with mouth-to-mouth
resuscitation until paramedics could take over.
Others directed traffic or tried to keep the crowd
back.
"It's a neighborhood where people aren't afraid to get
involved," Mahan said with a shrug.
Police stretched yellow tape around almost a full
block between Monroe and Taylor streets and Sixth
and Fifth Avenue North. Firefighters and officials with
the mayor's offices of Emergency Management and
Neighborhoods and the Metro Public Works
Department assisted in talking to neighbors, putting
foam on the plane and interviewing witnesses.
Mayor Bill Purcell, who visited the scene, said that
while it was a "great tragedy for those we lost," the
immediate and well-coordinated actions of the
community along with Metro agents, officers and
firefighters were noteworthy.
"I was impressed especially with the way this
neighborhood responded," Purcell said. "People were
moving quickly in the midst of great danger to try to
save the pilot and passenger."
A concern came out of yesterday's crash.
"Planes are flying over this area lower and lower, and
it really worries me," said Irene Boyd, who lives on
Fifth Avenue North. "It's scary."
Purcell said this is an issue that needs addressing.
"I don't think the city knows the extent of the risk," he
said. "It's a large city in the air, too. There are a series
of airports here and a number of planes moving
through the air all the time."
How planes are allowed to move above the city will
be discussed, he said, with the Metro Nashville
Airport Authority board.
Meanwhile, one neighbor had praise for the pilot.
"If he hadn't of pulled out of that (spiral), he would
have taken out two of my neighbors' houses and
ours," said James Blaylock Jr., 31, who watched the
plane's fall from his back porch on Seventh Avenue
North.
Mr. Loudermilk, who may have recently bought the
vintage airplane, had been flying for more than a
dozen years and was known as a friendly, likable
man.
"He was great fun to be around," said his brother
John Loudermilk.
Mr. Loudermilk, an airplane and motorcycle
enthusiast, graduated from Overton High School in
1964, and later Vanderbilt University, where he was
on the swim team.
"He had a love of old aircraft," his brother said.
He leaves two children, ages 10 and 12.
Mr. Canaday was a pilot and flew helicopters in
Vietnam, according to his housesitter, Stanley Hime.
He also was involved in music and played with the
Ozark Mountain Daredevils, a rock band, for years
and worked as tour manager for Lee Roy Parnell, a
country singer and guitarist, and Marshall Chapman, a
Nashville folk-rocker.
In a prominent place in his home, Mr. Canaday had
hung a gold record commemorating more than
500,000 single-copy sales of a Daredevils song.
"Everybody loved him," Hime said.
Most recently, Mr. Canaday had been working at
Wolf Camera and Video on 21st Avenue South. He
was known at work for being so helpful he would
assist customers with changing flats or jump-starting
cars.
He has a grown daughter in San Diego, Calif.
Funeral arrangements were not complete for either
man yesterday.
The last plane crash within Nashville took place in
1996 when a U.S. Navy F-14 plummeted into a
residential area in Antioch, killing five people,
including the two airmen.
Staff writers Jay Orr and Drew Sullivan
contributed to this report. The
Tennessean
