GORHAM – A Gorham pilot critically injured 22 years ago in an airplane wreck escaped unharmed from another air crash this week.
Stephen Berry, 67, crash landed Sunday among trees off Longfellow Road in Gorham after deploying a parachute when the engine of his light-weight aircraft, commonly known as an ultralight, stopped in mid air. Berry said he had been flying 55 miles per hour at an altitude of 500 feet.
“It just quit, absolutely quit,” Berry, who appeared unshaken, said Sunday after the crash.
“I unhooked my seat belt and walked out,” he said.
After climbing out of the cockpit and walking from the wooded area, Berry, who got a ride to his home a short distance away on Brackett Road, declined a medical checkup.
“I’m fine,” he said.
The accident isn’t discouraging Berry from flying again, but he will stick with regular airplanes in the future.
“I’m quitting ultralights,” Berry said Tuesday.
The crash brought neighbors out of their homes and ambulance and police cruisers rushed to the scene.
Police identified Berry’s aircraft as a “Spitfire single seat ultralite plane.” Berry said it was 10 years old.
Sgt. Benjamin Moreland of Gorham Police Department said in a report that Berry was not hurt in the “hard landing.”
Berry, 67, who has been flying for 28 years, lost his twin sister, also a pilot, in an airplane crash in 1988 in Arkansas. More than two decades ago, he survived a near-fatal crash.
He went down April 9, 1989, in Buxton while piloting his 1946 Taylorcraft. Berry recalled this week that he was hospitalized three months, used a wheelchair for two years, and walked with the aid of crutches for 18 years.
Berry said he had taken off from the Limington airstrip and crashed at Webster Field, a private airstrip in Buxton. Recalling the crash, Berry said, “I was flying too low and too slow. I got hit with wind, lost control and down she came.”
“Absolutely totaled it,” Berry said about the airplane he owned.
On April 12, 1989, the American Journal reported, “A Maine Medical Center spokeswoman reported Tuesday the condition of Stephen Berry of Gorham had been upgraded from critical to fair. Berry was injured late Sunday afternoon when his plane crashed in a Buxton airstrip.”
The article said Berry suffered multiple fractures and Berry was in a special care unit. A 21-year-old passenger was also hospitalized. An American Journal article reported on April 26 that Berry was wearing a body cast.
Despite the ordeal, Berry later resumed flying.
“I got out of a wheelchair into an ultralight,” he said.
This week, Berry crashed about 7:30 p.m. on July 17 among trees close to the home at 20 Longfellow Road, owned by Shawn and Lisa McDermott. The family was not home when Berry crashed.
The McDermotts learned about the crash early Monday after Berry arrived to retrieve his aircraft. “I’m glad he’s all right,” Lisa McDermott said Monday after Berry and friends loaded the aircraft onto a trailer.
Recounting Sunday’s events, Berry said he had taken off from his home on Brackett Road and flew to Buxton. He returned, landing in his back yard about 6:45 p.m. He had a half tank of fuel left.
“I took off again,” he said.
In what began as a routine flight, Berry flew from his home toward New Portland Road.
Berry is well known in town and is a familiar figure in the neighborhood sky. Sunday, David Boivin of Longfellow Road spotted Berry when he flew over just minutes before the crash.
“I was waving,” Boivin said.
Berry circled and was heading back home when the engine stopped.
“I instantly pulled the parachute,” Berry said. “It’s a second-chance parachute.”
The parachute, which Berry said cost $3,500, was connected to the aircraft behind the wing.
Berry said deployment of the parachute sounded from his cockpit like a 10-gauge shotgun blast. The explosion, he said, was a good sound.
“It was like a pop noise,” said Wendy Brunson, who heard the parachute deploy from several hundred feet away.
He said he was able to negotiate the aircraft and picked a landing spot “as much as I could. It came down gracefully.”
However, he said, a wing tip caught a former utility pole on the edge of the woods, but the aircraft came down flat, according to Berry.
Berry retrieved his aircraft early Monday morning. Lisa McDermott said Berry was in a truck in their yard when her daughter left the house early. Berry apologized for causing the commotion the evening before.
“What commotion?” she said her daughter asked.
“We didn’t find out until this morning,” McDermott said about the aircraft sitting in the wooden area near their home.
Berry said the landing gear and side rails of the aircraft were damaged in the crash.
Jim Peters of the Federal Aviation Administration in New York said Monday the agency is not investigating the crash. Peters said ultralights do not have to be registered with the agency and are not considered to be an airplane, although they resemble one.
But, Peters said, an agency investigator went to the scene to offer technical assistance to Gorham police. Police Chief Ronald Shepard and Officer Michael Brown were also at the scene along with Fire Chief Robert Lefebvre and a number of rescue personnel.
Lefebvre said Tuesday Berry in the past had flown as a volunteer in searches for lost people.
“He never hesitated to offer assistance,” Lefebvre said.
Berry said he holds a regular pilot’s license to fly single-engine aircraft and has Federal Aviation Administration medical approval.
Peters said the agency does not require those flying ultralights to be licensed. Berry said flying ultralights required nerves, “which I’m running out of.”
This week’s crash marked the first time Berry utilized a parachute, but he was prepared mentally to cope with an emergency.
“I’ve run it through my mind several times,” he said.
Berry said he has still in boxes two more aircrafts similar to the one that crashed, but plans to junk his ultralights, “unless someone has a better idea.”
“I’ve had enough fun,” Berry said.
The parachute still dangles among trees after Stephen Berry of
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