Dunham, Percy (1969) missing plane

Flight and occupants

The red-and-white twin-engine aircraft left Bader Field at about 9:45 p.m. in rain after a state high-school basketball tournament. Percy Dunham, 47, of 687 Slocum Avenue, Ridgefield, owned or operated the aircraft and had about eighteen years’ flying experience. Aboard were Edwina Dunham, 46; Brad Dunham, 14; George Miller, 18, of 451 Chestnut Street; Robert Takajian, 14, of 662 Edgewater Avenue; and Mary Sprusansky, 17, of 509 Washington Avenue. OCR and headlines misread Percy as “Jercy.”

Dunham filed no flight plan, and the alarm began about sixteen hours later when Robert’s father, Jack Takajian, notified Ridgefield Police. Strong westerly winds led searchers to consider both the ocean and inland Pine Barrens. Coast Guard aircraft covered thousands of square miles from Atlantic City to Sandy Hook and surrounding waterways; Civil Air Patrol planes searched inland from Lakewood, with helicopters, an amphibious aircraft and friends’ ground and motorcycle teams working Ocean and Burlington counties.

Outcome and settlement

The Air Force and official CAP search ended after seven days without finding wreckage. Volunteers and family continued, but no trace reported in the source record was recovered. More than two years later, Superior Court Judge James I. Toscano approved a $90,000 settlement: passenger families and estates shared $62,500 and Metropolitan Air Systems Corporation, identified as aircraft owner in that report, received $27,500. The allocation included $12,500 for Edwina’s estate, $10,000 for Brad’s, $13,000 for Miller’s, $17,000 for Sprusansky’s and $10,000 for Takajian’s. The claim alleged pilot negligence and emphasized the missing flight plan.

A family memorial record

A Find a Grave memorial for Percy H. Dunham gives a birth year of 1922 and confirms his death on March 29, 1969, matching the flight date exactly. Its burial field records him as lost at sea rather than interred in a grave, and identifies him as the pilot of a small aircraft that went missing along the coast between Atlantic City and Manahawkin. That description, from the memorial’s maintainer, favors an offshore loss over an inland Pine Barrens crash, consistent with this entry’s account of searchers weighing both possibilities. The memorial names his parents, Percy Glen Dunham (1895–1976) and Edith Harrop Dunham (1895–1964); his wife, Edwina Dunham (1923–1969), sharing his death date; his son, Brad Dunham (1954–1969); and two siblings. It gives no cause or location beyond the general shore-area description and does not mention the other passengers or the later settlement.