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Fighter jet crash sends family on sorrowful journeyBy MIKE BRASSFIELD © St. Petersburg Times, published March 30, 2001 ST. PETERSBURG -- For Charles and Anita Harvey, the news that two American fighter jets had crashed in the Scottish Highlands hit too close to home. One of the pilots was their son-in-law. Now the Harveys have left their home in Pinellas Point and have flown to England to help make funeral arrangements for Lt. Col. Kenneth J. Hyvonen, the U.S. Air Force pilot whose body was found Tuesday. Hyvonen is married to the Harveys' daughter, Sonya. "When the news came on Monday, I thought, "My God, I hope that's not him.' But it was him," said family friend Glenny Herring of Tampa. "We were all together last year." Hyvonen, from Michigan, was flying one of two F-15 jets that crashed Monday near a mountaintop in Scotland. The aircraft -- each with one pilot on board -- disappeared 45 minutes after taking off from Lakenheath air base, 75 miles northeast of London, where Hyvonen was stationed. Hyvonen's wife, Sonya, and the couple's two young children lived there as well. Sonya Hyvonen's parents, Charles and Anita Harvey, have lived on Sunshine Skyway Lane in St. Petersburg for about a year after moving there from Riverview in Hillsborough County, Herring said. Charles Harvey is retired from the military. Herring said Kenneth Hyvonen's unexpected death had hit the family hard. "He was a family man," Herring said. "They did a lot together." Search teams found Hyvonen's body and his F-15's wreckage Tuesday near the summit of 4,296-foot Ben Macdhui, the tallest peak in the Cairngorms, which rise in the central Highlands of Scotland and are Britain's highest mountain range. Rescuers working in blinding snow found wreckage of the second missing plane Wednesday, but the search for the second pilot, U.S. Air Force Capt. Kirk Jones, was suspended due to darkness and weather. The F-15 accident and the crash Monday of a U.S. Army reconnaissance plane in Germany that killed two pilots were the latest in a string of American military accidents in recent weeks.
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From the Times South Pinellas desks |
