{"id":41968,"date":"2017-12-12T17:01:08","date_gmt":"2017-12-12T17:01:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/armytimes\/uncategorized\/2017\/12\/12\/son-of-fallen-soldier-marks-anniversary-of-devastating-crash\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T03:10:03","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T03:10:03","slug":"son-of-fallen-soldier-marks-anniversary-of-devastating-crash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/armytimes\/news\/your-army\/2017\/12\/12\/son-of-fallen-soldier-marks-anniversary-of-devastating-crash\/","title":{"rendered":"Son of fallen soldier marks anniversary of devastating crash"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The 101 Airborne Division is marking a somber anniversary. (Daniel Woolfolk\/Staff)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n

Mickael Cruz remembers that Christmas was a few weeks away. He remembers gathering in the gym before classes started at Marshall Elementary School. Another kid said something about an airplane crashing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt can\u2019t be my dad because my dad comes home tomorrow. Not today, tomorrow,\u201d the 8-year-old thought.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the loudspeakers a voice called him and his brother. A neighbor from housing where they lived on Fort Campbell, Kentucky, picked them up. When they got home she took them upstairs to their room. Downstairs it looked like a hurricane had gone through, things broken, people crying.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The neighbor tried to explain through her own tears.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t understand. What\u2019s going on? Where\u2019s my dad?\u201d Cruz kept thinking. \u201cThen it hit me, my dad\u2019s never coming back.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The tragedy echoed across hundreds of homes as news reached them: 248 soldiers and eight crew members died in an airplane crash on Dec. 12, 1985 in Gander, Newfoundland, just as they took off on their final leg home from a six-month peacekeeping mission on the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The crash was later ruled to have been an accident, likely caused by ice on the plane\u2019s wings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At a massive memorial service days after the crash, President Ronald Reagan reminded the mourners that their sons and daughters were not just warriors but peacemakers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey were there to protect life,\u201d Reagan said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Archived photo of the 101st Airborne Division memorial service for the 248 soldiers killed in an airplane crash in Gander, Newfoundland on Dec. 12, 1985 while returning home from a peacekeeping mission in the Sinai Peninsula, Egypt. (Army archives)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The soldiers of the 3rd Battalion, 502nd Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade, 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) were in the Sinai on a Multinational Force and Observers mission to prevent hostilities between Egypt and Israel, a result of the 1979 peace treaty between the two nations, brokered in part by President Jimmy Carter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lt. Col. Martin O\u2019Donnell, public affairs officer for the 101st Airborne Division, served on the mission 15 years after the crash. He said the memory of the loss resonates today not only in Fort Campbell and nearby Hopkinsville but also at services at the MFO mission base in Sinai and in Gander, where the crash occurred.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After the crash, the Cruz family moved back to Puerto Rico where Cruz\u2019 father, Staff Sgt. Francisco Cruz Salgado, was raised. Fellow soldiers escorted Salgado\u2019s remains to be buried in the Puerto Rico National Cemetery. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The years passed but memories did not fade. The young Cruz looked more like his father as he became a young man. He went to college and participated in the ROTC program. In 2000, he enlisted in the Army.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His mother nearly cried the first time she saw him in uniform.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, Cruz is a chief warrant officer 3 with the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, and continuing a family tradition of serving.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They had not visited Fort Campbell since leaving so many years ago, so Cruz made a special route to travel to the post on his way from Fort Gordon, Georgia to Fort Riley, Kansas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He pulled up to the front gate and asked the gate guard if he knew where the 101st Airborne Division museum was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s near those trees behind Burger King,\u201d the guard said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cruz visited the museum, saw the artifacts of the famed \u201cScreaming Eagles\u201d and a section devoted to the single deadliest event in the history of the division. He learned that across the street, the trees the guard had referenced were planted in honor of those who perished in the crash.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Each had a plaque with the name of a soldier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That tree and the black stone memorial wall facing the trees would become a place of returning for Cruz as he traveled through his Army career, rising in rank and accomplishments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His father had been Air Assault qualified. So, in 2006 after he completed the school and got his \u201cblood wings\u201d he took them and pounded them into the tree.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He did the same again when he made staff sergeant, his father\u2019s final rank.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Staff Sgt. Francisco Cruz Salgado, father of CWO3 Michael Cruz. Salgado died along with 247 other soldiers of the 101st Airborne Division in a plane crash at Gander Newfoundland on Dec. 12, 1985 while traveling home from a peacekeeping mission on the Sinai Peninsula. (Contributed by the Cruz family)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Those emblems, and others, are still there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He took his own son, Joshua, to the tree during the 30th anniversary commemoration. The Army has marked each anniversary of the crash since it happened 32 years ago. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Except for a three-year stint in Germany, Cruz has attended every memorial since he was finally stationed at Fort Campbell in 2005.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Though he has been back in Puerto Rico this past week checking on family members still recovering from Hurricane Maria, he will return in time for the ceremony on Tuesday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou have to honor those who\u2019ve gone before us,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But more than the ritual observance of the tragedy, the memorial has offered Cruz and others ways to reconnect with memories of their friends and families.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Around this time each year, he\u2019ll see a new online message or hear from someone who knew his father.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI knew him as dad. I did not know him as a soldier, leader,\u201d Cruz said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Staff Sgt. Francisco Cruz Salgado, father of CWO3 Michael Cruz. Salgado died along with 247 other soldiers of the 101st Airborne Division in a plane crash at Gander Newfoundland on Dec. 12, 1985 while traveling home from a peacekeeping mission on the Sinai Peninsula. (Contributed by the Cruz family)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Ira Richardson, a retired major who served with the unit as a staff officer at the time of the crash, told Army Times that many of the unmarried soldiers slated for seats on the first plane gave up their seats to married soldiers to get home for the holidays.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat doubled the tragedy of the crash because everybody had a family,\u201d Richardson told Army Times at the 30th anniversary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As many years have passed as Cruz\u2019 father lived \u2013 32. Despite the tragedy, Cruz chose to continue a family legacy of grandfathers who served careers in the Army and the National Guard and a father who lost his life in service.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cruz uses the anniversaries to remember his father, look at old pictures and movies, tell stories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Each day he puts on the uniform, he remembers the man he lost so young. And he sees his work as continuing that man\u2019s legacy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI did it because of him,\u201d Cruz said. \u201cTo make him proud of me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
CWO3 Mickael Cruz, son of Staff Sgt. Cruz, who was killed in the Dec. 12, 1985 airplane crash that took the lives of 248 soldiers with the 101st Airborne Division who were returning home from a peacekeeping mission in the Sinai Peninsula. (Contributed)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This week marks the 32nd anniversary of an airplane crash that killed 248 soldiers and eight crew members in Gander, Newfoundland. 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