For an hopeful update on Feb. 6, 2025, from Feliks Banel, click here.
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Published in The Seattle Times online on Oct. 17, 2024
and in Pacific NW Magazine of the printed Times on Oct. 20, 2024
‘Life and survival’: Podcast probes 1963 air crash that killed 101
By Clay Eals
As we all know but rarely admit, death can arrive in unexpected and mysterious ways — and touch us for decades, perhaps forever.
Imagine you are 8-year-old Greg Barrowman on June 3, 1963, during the height of the Cold War. At Pierce County’s McChord Field, you wave goodbye to your 17-year-old brother, Bruce, who left high school for the Army and, with 100 others, boarded a four-prop Northwest Airlines DC-7C bound for a military fort in Anchorage.
Later, home from school in Renton, on KIRO-TV you watch “J.P. Patches.” Then you see the evening news’ lead story. It discloses that the DC-7C had crashed. All aboard, including Bruce, had perished.
It falls to you to alert your parents.
The next day, in The Seattle Times, the calamity is second only to banner treatment for the death of Pope John XXIII. No bodies were recovered from the crash, only scant remains, as Flight 293 had drilled 8,000 feet into the Gulf of Alaska.
The cause? No one knew then — or knows today, 61 years later.
Barrowman, now 69, lives in rural Kent. A father of four and grandfather of nine, the retired contractor and Puget Power manager has found a lifetime of solace in Christian faith and in engaging others who lost loved ones in the crash.
“It’s my human experience,” he says. “It’s kept me sensitive to the thoughts and lives of other people, and to be kind instead of aggressive or hateful. It’s taught me to love not only my family, but my neighbors and those around me. It’s important because right now there’s not a lot of that going around in the world.”
Barrowman’s complex personal story centers what longtime Seattle historian and broadcaster Feliks Banel considers his journalistic magnum opus. Far beyond his weekly eight-minute portraits for KIRO Newsradio, for eight years Banel has researched and assembled a thorough audio exploration of the crash. He’s unfurling it this month and next.
Featuring family and expert voices, his eight-part “Unsolved Histories” podcast totals eight hours. Pointedly, it examines how Flight 293, though primarily carrying defense personnel, has eluded latter-day military respect.
This epic tale connected Banel with “amazing, resilient” people such as Barrowman, who, with others, sought closure by installing a $10,000 monument to the flight at Tahoma National Cemetery.
A longtime Northwesterner, Banel has investigated many transportation disasters. But such focus is not “a ghoulish thing,” he says. “It’s the exact opposite. It’s about life and survival and how traumatic experiences shape our feelings about what we value most in the short time we have on Earth.”
WEB EXTRAS
Big thanks to Greg Barrowman and especially Feliks Banel for their invaluable help with this installment!
No 360-degree video this week, but below we feature a video interview of Barrowman at the Flight 293 monument at Tahoma National Cemetery.
Also below, you will find a map and 8 historical clips from The Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer online archive (available via Seattle Public Library), Newspapers.com and Washington Digital Newspapers, that were helpful in the preparation of this column.
