Fund begun for memorial to missing pair
Fund begun for memorial to missing pair
■ Money will buy hangar at airport near Fowlerville.
By TOM TOLEN
NEWS STAFF REPORTER
A fund drive has been initiated for a Genoa Township couple missing and presumed dead after their light plane faded to return to the Livingston County Airport in Howell following a trip to Drummond Island.
An account has been set up to collect the funds, which will be used for a new hangar at the Maple Grove Airport near Fowlerville.
A plaque — to be inscribed “The Davies hangar in memory of Mark and Janet Davies” — will be placed over the hangar.
“Both of them loved to fly, and Mark breathed, ate and slept aviation,” said friend and fellow pilot Jim Kiger of Stockbridge.
“We all show our caring in our way,” said Mildred Quinn, saying some Mends were not able to make it up north the past two weekends to take part in the ground search and felt compelled to show their feelings for the Davies family in some tangible way.
Funds collected through the drive also will be used toward purchase of a training plane for the Aviation Explorers, an organization affiliated with the Boy Scouts of America, which consists of more than 20 youths from the Brighton, Pinckney, Howell and Fowlerville areas interested in aviation.
According to Ron Cooper of Handy Township, a close friend of the couple and president of the Fowlerville Chapter of the Experimental Aircraft Association, the plane will be called “The Spirit of Mark and Janet Davies.” Mark Davies was vice president of the chapter.
The couple, who lived at Lake Chemung, flew to their property on the northern Lake Huron island the weekend of Sept. 13 in their single-engine Piper Cherokee. They departed from the island’s small airport on Sept 14 but never returned home.
Repeated air and ground searches have produced neither wreckage nor clues regarding the whereabouts of the couple or their plane. After a grueling ground search last weekend through rugged, densely wooded country in Presque Isle County’s Mackinaw State Forest,. the search effort was abandoned.
Janet Davies, 52, was an art teacher at Brighton’s Scranton Middle School and Mark Davies, 48, was shop foreman and assistant service manager at Marty Feldman Chevrolet in Novi.
Two memorial services are planned: one at 10 a.m. this Saturday at Holy Family Catholic Church in Grand Blanc and at 1 p.m. Oct. 11 at Hidden Springs Fellowship-Church at 5860 North Latson Road near Howell.
Donations may be sent to the Davies Fund, c/o Rosemary Denman, Scranton Middle School, 8415 Maltby Road, Brighton, MI 48116.