Last year, I interviewed a few people regarding their recollections of the plane crash in their neighborhood in 1944. I wrote a story about the Redbank Plane Crash posted on this blog  under the category ‘Redbank Years’. It continues to generate traffic each day. It is fortunate that some have chosen to contact me about their memories, so I have made it my mission to collect as many stories as I can while people are willing to share. I will present the collection to South Portland Historical Society. With permission from select families, I will post some of the stories here for people to read, so the stories are not idle on a shelf after they have been revealed. After all, these stories will soon be lost if someone does not collect them.
                     One woman wrote to me and told me about her father’s brother. His name was Edward Gerrish. Mr. Gerrish and his beautiful family lived in the Westbrook Street Trailer Camp, located at 276 Westbrook Street, in South Portland where the plane crashed that day on July 11th, 1944, simply known as the Redbank Plane Crash. This location today is behind Olde English Village Apartments, at the foot of the hill where the Maine Youth Center overlooks the Fore River. Edward Gerrish was age 32 and his wife Virginia Wescott Gerrish was 26 and pregnant with their fifth child on the day of the disaster. Their oldest daughter was Roberta, age 7, son John [Jack] was age 6, and a daughter Rose was age 4 and the youngest was Marion, age 2 ½. The only survivors that day were two of the Gerrish children who were outside playing at the time, Jack and Marion. They survived, according to their family, with burns and injuries from shrapnel. Later they would be sent to live with relatives. John [Jack] died in 2004. Marion is still living but her whereabouts unknown.
                     They located to South Portland from Orono, Maine. At the time, the economic situation in Orono was not good, so Edward decided to move his family to South Portland for work opportunities. He worked at the Shipyard. His plans to live in South Portland were temporary as he and his family planned to move back to Orono when the economic conditions looked better. They had started construction on a home in Orono. The photo of Edward with his three children was taken in front of Gerrish’s store in Orono, owned by his parents. I was curious as to how families were notified of the disaster especially if they lost loved ones. I was told by Edward’s family that his parents in Orono heard of the plane crash when they tuned into the 11:00 PM news on the radio. Families were supposed to be notified by the American Red Cross prior to the news story, however in Gerrish’s case this never happened. It is difficult to imagine being a great distance from family during such a tragedy with communications and travel being what they were in 1944.
                     There was also another gentleman who was a former police officer from Orono who lived near Gerrish, named Charles Mitchel. The family believed he had a wife and two children and they all survived.
                     Edward Gerrish’s niece scanned these pictures as a way to honor her family who perished that day. When I read her family account, it was ‘real’ to see their faces and to see what a nice little family they were. They could be any family. To see Edward Gerrish holding his children on the storefront steps really compelled me think back to the horror that people witnessed that day. Edward’s brother, Stanley, rarely spoke of his brother, sister –in-law and children who perished. According to his daughter Anne, it was just too painful. A memorial for those who perished in the plane crash may be long overdue, simply because it has never been spoken about by those who experienced it, and those lives lost ended with no memory except to the families and people of the neighborhood who lived with the aftermath. Those who perished survive in snapshots and fragmented memories in the minds of family members who keep their lost loved ones close to their hearts. 
                    Neighborhood children, now seniors, perhaps thought they were being bombed, after all it was wartime. Many of them have never spoken of that horrific tragedy they witnessed as children as some of them even lost their classmates. Those seeking to contact me can do so at fiddlinsuz@roadrunner.com

  Thank you to Anne Gerrish Mitchem and her mother for their willingness to share their family’s story along with photographs. It was a privilege to tell their story.




roberta,rose and john