State

By CHRISTINA HARLAN The Hero Who Wouldn't lump Residents of Morningside Drive refused to forget the pilot who saved their lives and homes. ing overhead — nothing too unusual to Charlotteans, since Morris Field, an Army base, was located in the city. There was something unusual about this formation of planes, though. One of them seemed to be having engine trouble. As the neighbors looked up at the plane, passing over their street, they saw that an engine was on fire. As they watched, the fire burned through the wing. Part of that wing fell through the roof of the house at 1300 Morningside Drive. The plane itself disappeared be¬ hind the house at 1309 Morningside, di¬ agonally across the street, and crashed into the bank of Briar Creek. Residents who rushed to aid the pilot were kept at a distance by intense flames. The pi¬ lot had just missed landing the plane on Hillcrest Golf Course. The sole occupant of the plane, an A-20 attack bomber, was 25 -year-old Second Lt. Budd Harris Andrews, a resident of York, Pennsylvania. An¬ drews, who was killed instantly, was making his last training flight in Char¬ lotte. He was scheduled to return home on leave before his next assignment in Okinawa. When the crash occurred, his wife Elaine, pregnant with their first child, was waiting for him so that they could begin their trip home. Miracu¬ lously. no one on the ground was in¬ jured. even at 1300 Morningside, where The years have not been kind to the bronze and cement marker in Charlotte’s Veterans Park. Although it fronts busy McClintock Road, at one of the park’s entrances, most of those passing by hardly give it a second glance. The few who do look more closely see an inscription on the marker which reads: BUDD ANDREWS ATHLETIC FIELD IN MEMORY OF LT. BUDD HARRIS ANDREWS KILLED IN ACTION APRIL 2. 1945 Who was Budd Andrews? He was a man that residents of nearby Morning¬ side Drive refused to forget. Morningside Drive, located between Central Avenue and Independence Bou¬ levard. in east Charlotte, was a model of middle class America in 1945. Brick and frame houses, while not large, were well-maintained on the neat, tree-lined street. Several of the houses backed up to the rolling greens of Hillcrest Golf Course. It was usually a quiet street, and it may have been the noise that Morningside residents first noticed. The Crash April 2nd had begun as a rainy Easter Monday in Charlotte, but by afternoon skies had cleared. In the early evening, in those days before air conditioning, many Morningside residents had moved outside to porches and yards. The late afternon spring stillness was broken only by the sound of Army planes fly- 16 The writer's house. 1309 Morningside Drive. Is the last house the heroic pilot hed to miss. The plane crashed virtually In her backyard. This marker stands at the McClintock Road entrance ol Veterans Park, where It was Instslled 18 years aHer Budd Andrews' death, following long and persistent persuasion by the people of the Morningside neigh¬ borhood. THE STATE, AUGUST 1985