On this BONUS EPISODE of CASCADE OF HISTORY, Feliks Banel presents an archival interview with the late Gene Casey from November 2015.

It was late on the snowy night of November 17, 1955 when an aging DC-4 full of soldiers on their way home from Korea took off from Boeing Field in Seattle. Within minutes, the plane crashed and burned in a residential neighborhood in the community of Burien, Washington. Twenty-eight of the 74 people on board died in the crash. Propeller maintenance errors were later blamed. In 2015, Feliks Banel spoke with one of the survivors – a man named Gene Casey, who in 1955 was a 19-year-old soldier from Chicago.

Though he was badly burned and had other serious injuries, Gene Casey helped another fellow soldier escape from the burning wreckage. Casey was promised a medal for his actions, but never received anything. Mr. Casey passed away in 2023 on the 68th anniversary of the crash. He was 87 years old.

Feliks had tried to get the Defense Department to award Mr. Casey a medal, and reached out to officials in his home state of Florida and in Washington, DC – but he was not successful. Much of it hinged on finding the fellow soldier who Casey had helped rescue from the crash. Feliks believes he identified that soldier – but the man is long deceased, and his living relatives have never responded to multiple phone calls and emails.

We’ve posted photos and more information about Gene Casey at the Cascade of History Facebook page. If you have any information about Mr. Casey’s actions in the November 17, 1955 crash in Burien, Washington, please get in touch by sending an email to: [email protected]

CASCADE OF HISTORY is broadcast LIVE most Sunday nights at 8pm Pacific Time via SPACE 101.1 FM in Seattle and gallantly streams everywhere via www.space101fm.org. The radio station broadcasts from studios at historic Magnuson Park – located in the former Master-at-Arms’ quarters in the old Sand Point Naval Air Station - on the shores of Lake Washington in Seattle.

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