One of the very first Ghost stories we heard of upon starting our ghost walk was from a nice lady who attended one of our very first Halloween prgrams. She told us not only about flight 2511 but how every evening at 2:38 AM in the morning you can still hear the sounds of an airplane's engine at the crash site. Below is a recount of the tragedy on the 50th anniversary of the crash from News 14.
Family remembers 1960 crash of National Airlines flight
BOLIVIA, NC – Wednesday marks the 50th anniversary of a deadly plane crash in a North Carolina community.
Investigators believe a suicide bomber brought down National Airlines Flight 2511 on Jan. 6, 1960, in Bolivia, N.C.
“I was horrified, I was really horrified,” Linda Silver Bufano said Wednesday, as she stood in the field where her parents' plane crashed 50 years ago. She was just 5 years old at the time.
“I just remember my uncle coming to the door and looking very somber and talking about a plane crash,” she said.
Bufano's parents were on the plane going on a second honeymoon.
Thirty-four people died in the crash.
The plane was traveling from New York to Miami, but crashed in a field on the Randolph family farm. The next day, 14-year-old Macarthur Randolph and his younger brother found the wreckage when they went out to feed the pigs before school.
“I was going back there, had a flashlight, ran up on these great big old tanks in the field,” Macarthur Randolph said. “So I threw everything down and came back and told daddy and daddy said he believed it was a plane.”
“There were bodies under there and we could the seats and stuff like that, you know,” Wallace Randolph added.
That night 50 years ago united Bufano and the Randolphs and their family farm.
“Every time I come here, I just well up inside and I feel like I'm with my parents,” Bufano said.
She worries airline security isn't much safer today than it was back then.
“It's just sort of scary today that with all we have in place, someone can still have explosives and get on an airplane,” she said. “That's kind of scary.”
What is often overlooked is the fact that this crash set the standard for future crash investigations in use today.