Mark Free

Who is Mark Free?

On Monday night November 20, 1967, around 9:00 PM, I was laying on the couch in my parent's home on Bluebird Lane in Hebron, Kentucky, watching television. My parents home was about 1/2 mile east of the north end of runway 18 at the Greater Cincinnati Airport {CVG}. The TV was along the wall of our picture window which faced the final approach for airplanes landing on Runway 18.It was dark and seemed somewhat foggy outside and also light snow was falling. I first noticed that the entire picture window lit up orange and then went dark again, I immediately arose from the couch to look out the window and no sooner than I got to the window the whole sky lit up orange again. It was only a few minutes later that the phone rang and it was a call from a neighbor further back in the neighborhood that advised my parents that a plane had crashed back in Mr. Wagner's Apple Orchard. I was 13 years old at the time of the crash, but my memories of November 20, 1967 are still very vivid. Part of this is due to the fact that the crash of TWA 128 was not the first crash that happened during my childhood. Two weeks prior to TWA flight 128, TWA flight 159 crashed on take off from Runway 27 Left. The first aviation disaster that I have any recollection of is the 1961 crash of a Zantop DC-4. I was awakened by fire trucks and ambulances travelling though our subdivision trying to find a route to get to the Zantop crash. Throughout the remaining years of my childhood growing up on Bluebird Lane, I and my friends would routinely hike back and "investigate" all of the accidents.Mark Free Today, Mark is a member of the Flight 383/128 Memorial Group collecting data and photographs in order to document these incidents and to place a permanent memorial in Northern Kentucky.