Last Flight Flying in the dark sky over Lake Okeechobee on the night of July 7, 1964. The single engine Cessna 182 with three men aboard. The pilot, Stanley Parrish, a produce broker and farmer, his brother Warren Parrish Postmaster of the Pompano Beach Post Office and their uncle T.J., Nobles retired Postmaster Pompano Beach. had departed a small town in the panhandle of North Florida about 2 hours earlier headed for their home in Pompano Beach, after attending the funeral of one of their relatives. The weather was partially over cast with intermittent rain showers and thunder storms as they crossed the city of Okeechobee and pointed the nose of their craft on a SE course for the last leg of their journey home across Lake Okeechobee that had originated in Pompano on Friday July 5th. I was the manager of the farm operations in Broward and Palm Beach county Florida for the Two brothers and my Father-in Law, J.H. Brown who were joint owners of the enterprise. On Monday morning July 8th I was standing beside my pick-up truck on Highway 441 after having checked one of the irrigation pumps that was being used to flood the fields we would be planting in the up-coming farming season when Dave Ballou, the owner of The Broward and Palm Beach John Deere Tractor co stopped and asked had I heard that the Parrish Brothers and Mr, Nobles plane was overdue and there was a search being organized by the CAP and he was going to be on one of the search planes. Dave belonged to the same flying club that owned the Cessna 182 that Stanley was a member of and it was one of their planes that was missing. The first two days of the search turned-up no sign of the missing plane. Seachers had made a preliminary sweep of Lake Okeechobee with no results, then moved the search to the surrounding ground areas bordering the Lake and in any direction they might have been passing over. Their last radio check having been made to Orlando made no mention of any problems from Stanley, a seasoned pilot. On Tues night, Hayden Hale, also a pilot and member of the same Flying club, and a friend of mine, called and asked would I go on a search mission Wednesday morning with himself, Landrum Blount, a local retired Farmer and businessman who would be piloting his own plane and they needed three observers. The other one would be Walter Schull, who was a business partner of Stanleys in a tomato farming enterprise in Boynton Beach, Fl. I agreed and we were to meet at the Pompano Beach Airport at 6 AM On Wednesday morning. One of the planes that joined us at Pompano airport and would start their search 10 miles South of where our assigned area would end was owned and piloted by Local pioneer, cattleman and farmer Henry Perry. Perry airport was on property he gave for a training field for the Navy and is now being used as a civilian airport. Our instructions from the CAP was as follows: we would fly a search pattern beginning at the Northern tip of Lake Okeechobee, Fly East to West at an altitude of 600 ft, and make a pass one mile apart in a line from the East to West or vice-versa down to 10 miles If we spotted any thing that might be aircraft wreckage , debris or remains, we were to note the location and radio the CAP in Miami with the information and for instructions. The search was being concentrated on Lake Okeechobee on the 3rd day after the disappearance of the plane because the temp of the water and all other factors involved pointed to any bodies not entangled in wreckage would probable surface after this time period. Arriving at our search area we began our search pattern. After making about 8 or 9 runs across the Lake and not having seen anything but flocks of birds, floating weeds and an occasional fishing boat we were just about ready to make our last pass and then ask the CAP to assign us another search area.we suddenly spotted something in the water and as we flew almost over it, it looked like a mattress, or something big spread out covering an area of about 6 feet square. Landrum circled back, dropped down lower and as we passed over the object, we thought it looked like a weed patch, but not being sure we dropped even lower, slowing the plane as much as possible, and even using binoculars, we could not make out the object. Meanwhile, a small fishing boat that had been moving towards Okeechobee about a mile away had turned after seeing us flying around and was approaching the object in the water. We tried to communicate with the lone fisherman in the boat but we couldn’t hear him Someone suggested maybe we could drop him a note and ask him about the object, A notepad was located in the glove compartment and the note written on the cardboard back, we asked him if that was a body or part of an airplane to take off his cap and wave it around. I opened the side window and as Landrum circled back, wiggled the wings, I stuck the note out the window but not before threading the pencil through the cardboard to make it “glide” a little better. The note fluttered down and the fisherman motored over, retrieved and read it, pulled off his hat( he was totally bald )and as his head was reflecting in the sun he waved his arm around and around over that shining head and we knew we had made the sighting we had been dreading and searching for. Now that we knew we had located wreckage, not knowing if it were persons or plane we had to gain altitude to call the CAP in Miami. When we made radio contact, they instructed us to fly into Clewiston and call them on a land line as they didn’t know who was monitoring the frequency. We did that and the landing on the grass strip between huge power lines and trees bordering the Clewiston strip was the most harrowing part of the flight, considering the full load we were carrying. We were instructed to go back to the sighting and if the fisherman was still there try to get him to remain and then fly into the Okeechobee airport, There we would be met by a Deputy Sheriff and he would drive us to the Joe and Wanda fish camp (I had fished out of this camp many times in the past) and there would be a boat waiting and to go with the Deputy to the sighting (It was about 10 miles South of the fish camp). Hayden, myself and the Deputy tied an empty boat with a tarp on board to our boat and set out into the Lake. Landrum and Walter went back to the airport , they flew out to guide us to the object. Arriving at the site quite a bit later, the fisherman was still there and informed us it was a body in the water that we had spotted, gave us the note we had dropped, said he had to get his fish to the coolers waved goodby and was gone. We didn’t even have a chance to get his name. The Deputy called the boatramp on his radio and informed them we had a “signal 7" which was a body. Then as we were getting the boats in close to the body, the Deputy got violently sick and began hanging over the side of the boat. This left just Hayden and myself to figure out how would be the best way to retrieve the body that was in a high state of decomposition and it was this odor making the Deputy sick. By now, he was very sick and lying in the bottom of the boat. I transferred to the empty boat, paddled it next to the body and I could see the grey hairs on the back of the neck of the victim and I knew it was an older person and Mr, Nobles would be that person. I ran the oar down and under the legs that were hanging almost straight down in the water and when I lifted one of them up, I could see there was just skin holding the feet on and on the skin I noticed a stocking garter on it and it was then I knew it was Mr. Nobles because he always wore garters to hold up his knee-high socks. I knew this because he worked on the same farm that I did as time keeper and I was with him every day. I also saw what appeared to be metal springs embedded in his back and this would probably be from the backrest of the plane. Hayden and I took the tarp we had brought and after much trouble, we worked it under neath the body and holding the four corners slowly pulled him into the boat. The Deputy was still very sick and the odors and sight we were exposed to was extremely unpleasant and after we secured the tarp with the body inside it and started moving, the odor became less noxious, We made a couple of circles around to see if there was anything else to pick-up and seeing none, we started back to the fish camp. Approaching the camp the Deputy was feeling well enough now that we let him bring us to the dock where there was a large crowd of people waiting. After we docked and had talked to the officers and the coroner we asked to be taken back to the Okeechobee airport. Arriving there, Landrum had the plane ready to go and after we quickly told him what happened we climbed aboard and as we were pulling out a man came running out to us waving his arms and shouting. Landrum stopped the plane and shut down the engine to find out what he wanted, It was a channel 4 television news reporter from Miami, he asked did we just come from the boat landing and if so, what was going on there. We quickly told him what part we played in this operation and now were going back to Pompano, he had his camera man filming all the time. We showed him the note from the fisherman and how it all came together which he also filmed. When he finished, Landrum said it was getting late (its now 4pm in the afternoon) and we were tired and hungry and had to leave. The reporter asked if we would do him a favor and fly the film on down to the Miami airport so they could get it on the 6 o’clock news, Landrum declined and told him that would put us home too late, the reporter asked if we would fly it to the Ft. Lauderdale airport and someone would meet us there, we agreed and he unloaded the film from his camera and put it aboard. As we flew South over the lake on our way home, there were numerous boats in the area where we picked up Mr. Nobles and we were informed by radio that another body had surfaced (it was Warren Parrish). The body of Stanley Parrish was sighted and picked up the next morning, thus bringing to a close the search. There were many people involved in this search including those from the flying club including Dave Ballou, Dr, Jim Foslum and Dan Hall (Who added comments to this story). When we approached the Ft Lauderdale airport, we received a radio call telling us where to stop the plane after landing, that there was a man waiting for us. Arriving back in Pompano, I got into my car and I was only a short distance from the airport, I was there in minutes, I told my wife to turn on the TV to channel 4 as it was a few minutes until the news came on at 6 pm. Ralph Rennick, the channel 4 newscaster narrated the story and apologized for the quality of the film as it was still wet from the developing, but they had their story. When I left home that morning I had no idea I would be involved in a situation such as this, especially going out and retrieving the body of my friend and neighbor Mr. Nobles from Lake Okeechobee. There was a concentrated effort made by the flying club to locate the plane in the lake but there was never any part of it that ever surfaced or found or any cause for the crash. Stanley Parrish (Beanpicker ‘37) and Warren Parrish (Beanpicker ‘35) and their uncle T.J. Nobles are buried in the Pompano Beach Cemetery.