October 25, 1999: Golfer Payne Stewart and 5 friends die in the crash of a Learjet. The plane was flying from Orlando to Dallas, and suffered a loss of cabin pressure, meaning that everyone on board was dead well before the plane finally ran out of gas and went down, far off course, in Mina, South Dakota.
NOTE: For a long time, with this project, I resisted putting in references to golf, because of the kind of people who tend to play it. I finally caved in, although I haven't included as many references as I would if it were a real sport, which it is not.
William Payne Stewart was born in 1957 in Springfield, Missouri. He was known for wearing old-time golf clothing, including ivy caps and pants that were a combination between plus-fours for and knickerbockers, and also for diving into water hazards when he won tournaments. He won the PGA Championship in 1989, and the U.S. Open in 1991. Earlier in 1999, he won the U.S. Open, and participated in the U.S.' dramatic come-from-behind win in the Ryder Cup.
He boarded a Learjet 35 and took off from Orlando, Florida, heading for Houston, where he intended to play in the last major tournament of the PGA season, The Tour Championship. The others on board were the pilots, Michael Kling and Stephanie Bellegarrigue; Stewart's agent Robert Fraley, a former University of Alabama quarterback; Van Ardan, president of Fraley's agency; and Bruce Borland, who designed golf courses for Jack Nicklaus' company.
But the plane veered off course -- or, rather, it stayed on course, on automatic pilot, going far from its intended destination of Houston. Stewart was famous enough that the TV news networks broke in with a special report, knowing only that the plane was off course, and saying that the likeliest explanation was that it was on autopilot, everyone on board was already dead, and it would crash when it ran out of fuel.
The plane before its final flight
This was 3 months after the crash of John F. Kennedy Jr., and it was a similar situation: We were merely awaiting the inevitable announcement. Only it would come sooner, because there would be no water search: Since the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) already knew the plane was off course, the U.S. Air Force was able to track it, and escort it, to report on the eventual crash, or to escort it in the slim hope that someone could still land it.
Our Air Force wasn't the only one tracking it: Prime Minister Jean Chrétien was told that the plane might crash over the city of Winnipeg, and he gave the order (reluctantly, he admitted in his memoirs) to the Royal Canadian Air Force to shoot it down if it crossed the border. But right after he gave the order, he received word that the plane had already crashed in South Dakota. It was 12:13 PM, Central Time (1:13 Eastern). The plane had been in the air for 3 hours and 54 minutes.
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) concluded that the plane failed to pressurize, and everyone was incapacitated by hypoxia as it passed Gainesville, Florida. Stuck on autopilot, the plane kept going in the same direction, nearly all the way across the country from Houston.
Stewart was 42. Over the next year, various golfers wore copies of his outfits in tribute in tournaments. He was elected to the World Golf Hall of Fame in 2001. The section of Interstate 44 that goes through his hometown of Springfield has been named the Payne Stewart Memorial Highway. A new course in Branson, Missouri was named the Payne Stewart Golf Club.
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October 25, 1999 was a Monday. Baseball was on a travel day in the World Series, in which the New York Yankees would sweep the Atlanta Braves in 4 straight. The NBA season was 8 days away from starting.
On ABC Monday Night Football, the Pittsburgh Steelers beat the Atlanta Falcons, 13-9 at Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh.
And there was 1 game played in the NHL: The Toronto Maple Leafs beat the Dallas Stars, 4-0 at the Air Canada Centre (now the Scotiabank Arena) in Toronto.
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