By Jen Lynds, Bangor Daily News
HOULTON, Maine — Hunters and hikers out in the woods this fall are being asked to keep an eye out for the remains of a Houlton-based pilot or his plane that disappeared, likely somewhere over coastal or central Maine, on a stormy day 44 years ago.
The pilot, Lewis “Billy” Hogan Jr., a 28-year-old Houlton man, was working for LISAir when he left Danbury, Connecticut, at 8:15 a.m. on May 2, 1972, in a brand-new, yellow-and-white single-engine Citabria. He was expected to land at Houlton International Airport later that day, but communication was lost somewhere between Kennebunk and Augusta. Hogan was never heard from again, and search crews never found his remains or any trace of the plane.
Search efforts have intensified over the last couple of years, however, since Hogan’s brother, Jerome Hogan of Bangor, sought to renew interest in the case.
Members of the Old Town Aviation Explorers Post 787 and the Down East Emergency Medicine Institute have been among the volunteers who have ramped up search efforts.
Malcolm Brydon, who is a coordinator with the Aviation Explorers, said Wednesday that the post members have done “six or seven” searches for Hogan’s plane or human remains this year, particularly focused on Mount Waldo in Frankfort. While unsuccessful to date, the organization continues its efforts, and it also is turning to hunters, hikers and snowmobile club members, or anyone who is in the woods this fall, to cast an even larger net.
“We are asking hunters, hikers or anyone who belongs to a snowmobile club and may be out in the woods this fall searching for game or preparing trails to be on the lookout for not just airplane wreckage, but human remains as well,” he said. “You may be out in the woods and step on something and don’t think anything of it because it is something you have stepped on a hundred times, and it ends up being the wreckage of a plane. So we are just asking people to take that extra time to look.”
Brydon said that searchers are exploring the possibility that Hogan could have survived the initial plane crash and crawled from the wreckage into the woods, so the remains might not necessarily be found near the crash site. He also said that the pilot customarily carried a very large key ring on him, for which they also are asking hunters and hikers to be on the lookout.
Searchers have focused on Mount Waldo because of the testimony of Diane White of Bar Harbor, who used to live in Frankfort. She said that when she was hiking on Mount Waldo with the intention of seeing the wreckage of an old seaplane that crashed into the top of the mountain in the 1960s, she got lost and came upon the wreckage of another plane that she believes could be Hogan’s plane.
White hadn’t thought much about her finding until after the BDN wrote in October 2015 about Jerome Hogan’s renewed effort to find his sibling’s remains.
Brydon, Jerome Hogan and members of the Old Town Aviation Explorers Post 787 and the Downeast Emergency Medicine Institute plan to return to Mount Waldo in December, when the trees have shed their leaves, to conduct another search. He said that Downeast Emergency Medicine Institute has a drone that volunteers plan to fly over certain sections of Mount Waldo that will cut down on their search times “considerably.”
He also said that having hunters and hikers keep an eye out will be a big help.
“I think any additional help we can get to get this mystery solved will be great,” he said.
This story appears through a partnership with the Bangor Daily News