A midair small-plane collision over Zion Wednesday permanently silenced one of Chicago's great voices, killed two others and forced the evacuation of a hospital after one plane smashed into its roof and another crashed onto a nearby street.
Amazingly, no one on the ground was seriously hurt.
WGN 720-AM radio host Bob Collins and his Mettawa neighbor, Herman F. Luscher, were flying about 2 miles northeast of Waukegan Regional Airport just after 3 p.m. when the Moravan Zlim 242L two- seater Collins co-owned collided with a four-seat Cessna 172L flown by a student pilot.
The identity of that pilot, who Lake County Coroner Barbara Richardson said was a United Airlines flight attendant, was not released pending notification of her family members in Chicago.
The two single-engine planes, police and witnesses said, appeared to hit nose-to-nose before the Cessna went down near the Sheridan Health Care nursing facility at 25th Street and Elim Avenue, according to Zion Police Chief Gordon Ohlmstead. The Zlim attempted to stay in its flight path before going through the roof of the Midwestern Regional Medical Center a few blocks away.
Only two medical center employees suffered minor burns. The situation could have been much worse as witnesses observed one of the planes flying over Central Junior High School students who had just been let out for the day.
Elizabeth Isham Cory, a Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman, originally said both planes were on final approach to Waukegan Regional. Cory later retracted that statement, saying it was unclear if the planes were arriving or departing one of the airport's two runways.
Both pilots should have made radio contact with the tower, several pilots said, since they were within a 5-mile radius of the airport. At least two National Transportation Safety Board investigators were on the scene late Tuesday, launching the first steps of an investigation that likely will take a year or more to complete.
The affable Collins, who would have turned 58 on Feb. 28, had several years of experience in various cockpits and was on the waiting list to buy a Cirrus SR-20, the first plane in history to have a parachute as standard equipment. Luscher, his neighbor in Mettawa near Libertyville, was rated as an airline transport pilot, according to FAA pilot information obtained through an Internet database.
It is unknown which pilot was flying the Zlim at the time of the collision. Lenny Khayat, a managing partner at Midlane Country Club in Wadsworth who knew Collins for about 10 years, said Collins was coming back from having lunch in Sheboygan, Wis.
Les Mussared of Zion was about to enter the Walgreens on Sheridan Road, about a one-quarter block from the Midwestern Regional Medical Center, when he heard two planes overhead.
"They couldn't have been more than 20 or 30 feet apart," he said. "They appeared to be trying to get more power."
Mussared said he saw them collide about 600 feet above him and then he immediately went to a pay phone to dial 911. He described most of what he saw after the collision was like a scene from a movie.
"One (plane) was headed eastbound and started to dive like it lost all power, then it looked like it started to gain.
"It went up in the air and then crashed in the street."
A few seconds later, he said, the other plane headed southwest toward the Waukegan airport less than 2 miles away and crashed on top of the hospital.
"It sounded like a loud explosion. The windows blew straight out."
Shaken by what he had just seen, Mussared still picked up his son's medicine from the Walgreens pharmacy. "When I got home, I was almost in tears," he said.
Roger Cary, president of the Cancer Treatment Center of America, said he was on the first floor of the five-floor hospital when he heard the initial explosion.
That is when the hospital went into disaster mode and started clearing patients from the top floors.
"The second explosion blew out the walls on the top floor," Cary said. "There was damage to the fourth and fifth floors and the roof caved in."
Patients from across the country were at the hospital for all sorts of cancer treatment. On Tuesday, patients from California, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Alaska were moved to area hospitals. Cary said patients due to arrive at the hospital on Wednesday will be referred to its sister hospital in Tulsa, Okla.
Fire spread rapidly through the hospital's conference room and blew out windows on the west and south sides of the building. About 40 patients were evacuated, with most being sent to the Sheridan center and others taken to area hospitals.
There were two medical center employees on the building's fifth floor when the plane hit the building. They reported hearing two explosions, one when the plane crashed into the roof and another when it crashed through the roof and hit the floor of the conference room and a fire broke out.
Those two employees were slightly singed, but in all other ways OK.
The Cessna 172L flown by the female student pilot was based at Palwaukee Municipal Airport in Wheeling, said airport Manager Fred E. Stewart Jr. It was owned by American Flyers, a flight school with planes at Palwaukee and DuPage airports.
Several workers at the airport said student pilots often took off from Palwaukee and headed to Waukegan to practice touch-and-go operations because it is less congested than Palwaukee and further away from O'Hare International Airport's airspace. Student pilots need to practice such maneuvers to log flight hours that will enable them to get their licenses.
Friends and fellow pilots described Collins, who wrote a weekly column for the Daily Herald, as a cautious pilot who loved to fly.
"Both times I flew with him he seemed like a very accomplished pilot," said Dean Ellis, founder of the Windy City Flyers flying club at Palwaukee, which Collins had just joined late last year. "He was very interested in proving his skills whenever he flew. He asked about our training program and asked to sign up for lessons through us. A very good pilot is always learning."
Besides his reputation as a good pilot, Collins also looked out for his friends. Last fall, he came to the aid of local musician Bob Young and his wife, Mary, who lost nearly everything they owned in a September fire at their Buffalo Grove condominium.
Collins helped organize an October benefit concert for his longtime friends at the Waukegan airport that drew more than a thousand people, raised a "huge" undisclosed amount of money and served as a reunion for a cast of 1950s and '60s era bands.
Collins also spoke fondly of "our Bob Young" on his radio show the morning after the blaze.
"When that happened, when we lost everything and were standing around barefoot, there's Bob on the air making us feel like we had this huge family," said Young, who, when he heard the news Tuesday, realized he was wearing a pair of Harley-Davidson pants given to him by Collins after the blaze.
Said Daniel A Bitton, who co-owned the Zlim aircraft in which Collins died: "Mr. Collins was a close and dear personal friend of mine, as well as being a safe and capable flying partner. No words can express my feelings at this time."
Daily Herald staff writers Tony Gordon, Steve Warmbir, Bob Susnjara, Shamus Toomey, Laurie Aucoin, Russell Lissau, Teresa Mask and Allison Kaplan contributed to this report.
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