Western Front - 1987 November 6

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WESTERN FRONT
iiililiilii WESTERN WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY, BELLINGHAM, WA, FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 6,1987
Ross, 2 vice presidents killed
Searchers find plane wreckage
By THE FRONT STAFF
Western President G. Robert
Ross, two vice presidents and a
pilot were killed in a plane crash
about 10 miles north of Belling-ham
Wednesday night.
Ross; Jeanene DeLille, vice
president of university advance-
G. ROBERT ROSS
ment; Don Cole, vice president of
business and finance affairs; and
pilot Ty Hardin were returning to
Bellingham International Airport
after a fund-raising alumni dinner
in Tacoma when their plane
crashed between 10:30 and 11
p.m.
Whatcom County Explorer
Search and Rescue crews dis­covered
the wreckage of the Cas­cade
Flight School's Cessna 310
before dusk yesterday in a flat,
heavily-wooded patch of forest
northwest of Lake Terrell, in the
vicinity of Kickerville and Lonseth
-oads.
Undersheriff Doug Gill said
the plane crashed heading south a
little more than seven miles from
the airport, leaving about a 100-
yard wreckage path.
He said the plane was "totally
destroyed."
"If you didn't know it was an
airplane, you probably couldn't
tell," Gill said. "The trees almost
appeared to have swallowed the
plane."
The Board of Trustees, sched­uled
to meet Wednesday, post­poned
regular business for anoth­er
week. Al Froderberg, acting
vice president, will become acting
president until the trustees decide
on a replacement.
Froderberg said a small
memorial service may be planned
for Monday or Tuesday. Classes
will not be cancelled, he said.
The plane disappeared shortly
after Vancouver International
Airport cleared the plane to land
at Bellingham International Air­port
at 10:25 p.m.. The plane was
reported one-and-a-half miles
northeast of the airstrip. Control
towers then lost radar and radio
contact after the plane apparently
aborted its first landing attempt.
Mike Connors, Port of Bel-lingham's
public information of­ficer,
said normal procedure after
missing the runway is to climb and
circle to the northwest for another
approach.
Bill French, a Ferndale resi­dent
living eight miles north of
the airport, heard the plane crash
half a mile from his home.
"It sounded like a car going
into a ditch and glass being
PKTE KENDALL
Bob Cameron, member of the Whatcom County Search and Rescue Four-by-Four, uses a
flashlight to examine the gutted passenger cabin where at least one of the four bodies
was found. Because darkness had fallen, this photograph was taken with light from a
flashlight.
broken," he said.
French said he then ran out­side.
"I didn't think much about
the noise. I looked up and down
the road through the fog and fig­ured
somebody rolled their car
into the ditch."
It took searchers about two
hours to confirm the plane wasn't
on airport property. A full-scale
search could not begin until
daybreak.
The number of people search-ing
for the wreckage grew
throughout the day from 25 in the
early morning to more than 100 as
the search ended nearly 18 hours
after the crash.
Ground crews received help
from county search-and-rescue "4-
by-4s," Bellingham police cadets
and university personnel. The
Washington Pilot's Association
and the Civil Air Patrol con­ducted
an air search, while
Lummi Indian fishermen and the
coast guard patrolled waters look­ing
for the downed plane.
Search and rescue teams dis­covered
wreckage of the twin-engine
plane at about 5 p.m. as
the sun began setting and the
teams prepared to end the search
until the next day.
Please see CRASH, p.2
Cole, DeLille helped college grow
By KATHY TUCKER
staff reporter
Friends and co-workers of
Jeanene DeLille and Donald H.
Cole said both added to West­ern's
growth.
DeLille and Cole died in a
plane crash Wednesday night that
also took the life of President G.
Robert Ross.
Cole, 50, was Western's vice
president of business and financial
affairs since 1974.
Director of the Physical Plant
Peter Harris said Cole's death was
"a real loss to the University."
He was "a very fine person,"
Harris said, and "one of the best
bosses I ever had, if not the best."
DeLille, 38, was the vice presi­dent
of university advancement
since October 1986.
"She took over something that
was really disorganized and made
it go," said Chris Sutton, a West-
DONALD COLE
ern Foundation secretary, who
worked closely with DeLille and
described her as a "go-getter,"
but a fair boss.
"I have always described her
as being hell on-wheels," she said.
Co-workers of both ad­m
i n i s t r a t o r s said Cole and
DeLille contributed to Western
JEANENE DELILLE
through hard work.
"Jeanene never had any free
time, she spent all of her time
working for the university," Sut­ton
said. She said many of
DeLille's friends were related to
business, and she constantly
promoted Western's image.
Please see VP, p.3
President Ross shared his
Western with the world
By MARY DARLING
staff reporter
During his almost five years
at Western, President G. Robert
Ross helped make legislators,
the community and the world
more aware of Western, several
of his associates said.
George Drake, special as­sistant
to the president on inter­national
affairs, said Ross
believed the university should
be responsive to the com­munity's
needs and not just an
"academic ivory tower on the
hilltop."
He said Ross realized that
you can't be a student of the
world without direct contact
with it.
Ross died at age 59 in a
tragic plane crash Wednesday
night that also killed Jeanene
DeLille, vice president for uni­versity
advancement, and Don
Cole, vice president for business
and financial affairs.
Drake said one of Ross's
top priorities was to internation­alize
the community and to pro­mote
greater exchange between
countries. Ross was the driving
force behind starting the ex­change
programs with several
universities in Japan and China,
he said.
A week-and-a-half ago he
returned from China where he
was working on one of those ex­changes.
Robert Thorndike, chair of
the psychology department and
president of the.Faculty Senate
from 1985 until 1986, said Ross
Please see ROSS, p.2