Retired trooper recalls tragic scene of ill-fated flight
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On the morning of Dec. 1, 1959, state Trooper John Sherosick, just five years on the job, was on routine patrol, coming into Montoursville just before 10 a.m., when he noticed "a lot of commotion going on" in the borough.
"There was a lot of traffic on Broad Street, heading toward the airport. At the time, I knew nothing about what had just happened," he said.
The 29-year-old trooper stopped at the barracks on Cherry Street to see what was going on. He was ordered to go to the nearby airport and see Sgt. Earl Moore, an aeronautical investigator with the state police.
Allegheny Airlines Flight 371 with 26 people aboard had just slammed into the side of Bald Eagle Mountain near the airport, but no one at the barracks shared that with the young trooper.
"When I got to the airport, I met with Sgt. Moore. He pointed to a helicopter. 'You get in that helicopter. It's going to take you over the scene where an airliner just crashed," Sherosick recalled in a recent interview.
He didn't know it then, but Sherosick was going to be lowered to the crash site on a cable.
"It was a snowy, cloudy day. It was on the cold side," he said.
"We could definitely see the crash from the helicopter. It was a total loss. It was all burned up," said Sherosick, a Wayne County native.
"On the helicopter, one of the guys told me to sit down and allow my feet to dangle out the door. He put a harness around me and told me he was going to lower me to the ground," said Sherosick, a 1947 graduate of Forest City High School.
"When I first got aboard, I thought we would go over the site and then the pilot would try to set the helicopter down nearby," Sherosick said, adding this was the first time he ever saw an airplane crash. It also was the first -- and only -- time he would jump from a helicopter.
"I had to do what I was ordered to do," he said, describing the scene "as very remote, hilly and rocky," very rugged terrain.
"We were above the treetops," which were covered with snow, he added.
"When they pushed me out, I heard a big 'Eek.' It scared the heck out of me. It was the equipment, probably the sound of the cable stretching," the 87-year-old Sherosick said.
"As they were lowering me, I was swinging back and fourth on the cable, due in part to the wind as well as the motion of the blades from the helicopter," he said.
He later was told that he was swinging with such force that the helicopter crew "feared I was going to take them down with me."
Once he was on the ground, Sherosick regained his balance and took the harness off so it could be raised up. He was the first state trooper, but not the first civilian, to reach the tragic site.
Dr. W.W. Wilcox, a physician in Montoursville, already had been lowered to the ground via the helicopter. At the time, he just happened to be Sherosick's family doctor.
Sherosick would spend the remainder of the day providing security at the scene.
"My duty was to keep an eye on people so that they would not go into the scene," he said.
"The entire plane was burned up. There was only one survivor who was found in the ruins of the crash," Sherosick said.
That survivor was 35-year-old businessman Louis Matarazzo, of Springfield, a Philadelphia suburb. A second person was found alive but died on the way to the hospital.
"I don't recall what exactly was going through my head at the time, but I do remember saying to myself, 'What a shame. All these people lost, burned up.' There was a terrible odor," Sherosick recalled.
The crash site was inaccessible to vehicles.
"I don't think any emergency vehicles got near the scene. They were down at the foot of the mountain. I can't recall, but I believe some of the vehicles were stationed at an old railroad bed. They had to carry the bodies down the mountain and then take them away in the vehicles," he said.
"As far as death, this was the worst thing I saw, I experienced, in my 32 years as a trooper," said Sherosick, who retired in 1986 as a corporal in the patrol division at the local barracks.
"It's a day I would never forget. I recall it every year" when the anniversary approaches, he said.
Sherosick stayed at the crash site for hours, assisting in carrying the last body off the mountain.
A lifelong Catholic who was married to the former Clara Slavinski for nearly 58 years before her death three years ago, Sherosick said: "It was clearly the most horrific scene I would see in my lifetime. It was very sad."