This is the 22nd year the Dayton Daily News has sent me to the Dayton Air Show to bring back photos of thrilling airplanes and enthusiastic aviation fans.
This has turned into the year we have always dreaded.
At 2:30 p.m. Saturday, Jim LeRoy and Skip Stewart had just taken the runway to start their Codename: Mary's Lamb aerobatic performance. Two young women with hand-held radios appeared next to me at show center at the same time. Both the spouses of the pilots.
I didn't know these women, but recognized Stewart's show logo on one and the unmistakable Bulldog yellow on the other. They started to coordinate the start of the Mary's Lamb show and I asked for the radio frequency they were using. "One-twenty-three point fifteen," Christina Stewart replied.
The music started, the planes roared off the runway and I chastised myself for missing the opening shot of the two planes passing knife-ege, 15 feet off the ground with full smoke. I made sure the camera was focused on the planes after that but had trouble following them because of all the smoke.
Then it happened.
Jim looked too low to make the bottom of the half-Cuban eight, a maneuver that looks like an 8 on its side.
The plane hit the runway.
I quickly focused on the plane as it skidded down the runway, clicking away until it came to a rest in the grass next to runway 24R-6L. Flames shot out from under the wings and it was soon engulfed. A sickly feeling fell over me.
The wives of the pilots were crouching a car's-length away, holding each other. I felt horrible for them.
"Get him out of there," I heard one of them say.
Such a sense of helplessness.
Air show boss Dan Alspach raced to the scene in his pickup truck, but could do nothing because of the fire.
According to the clock in my camera, it took two minutes and 30 seconds for the fire truck to arrive on the scene. A fact not lost to Alspach, who believes the fire equipment should have been stationed closer to the air show runway.
My hands were shaking as I tried to take the disk out of the camera.
The thing I never wanted to see or photograph had just happened.
Air show announcer Rob Reider immediately calmed the crowd and asked that parents get their children's attention focused on other things.
Reider, ever the professional, offered a prayer for Jim and every head in the crowd appeared bowed.
The air show community is tight-knit.
Everybody knows everybody. Everyone around show center immediately looked after Jim's wife, Joanie LeRoy, and her son, Tommy, who just turned 4 years old this week.
I had spoken to Jim LeRoy early Saturday morning before the gates to the Vectren Dayton Air Show opened. Jim was cleaning the bugs off his beautiful yellow Pitts S2S biplane the Bulldog II.
We talked about the air show business and how so many civilian performers are searching for big money sponsors.
Jim said that wasn't for him. Jim built his career on being a great pilot and managing his air show business with Joanie.
He flew great air shows and he will be missed by many, including this photographer.
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