"You just have to go on": Families remember somber legacy of Farrell's Ice Cream Parlour crash, 50 years later
SACRAMENTO -- A plane crashed into a full ice cream parlor 50 years ago Saturday. This weekend, Sacramentans will be remembering the lives lost and the lives saved decades later.
CBS13 sat down with a victim's mother and the man tasked with keeping the legacy of the Firefighters Burn Institute alive.
"This is my baby girl," said Lynn Mehren as she looked over newspaper clippings from Sept. 24, 1972.
The headlines are still haunting.
"She had gone with a family friend of hers from school. They were going to be pom-pom girls at a McClatchy game."
Mehren replays what happened to her nine-year-old daughter Nancy over and over.
"We waited and waited for her to come home and she didn't come and didn't come," Mehren said.
Mehren turned on the television to see images of a fiery plane crash into a Farrell's Ice Cream Parlor. The pilot had lost control after taking off from nearby Sacramento Executive Airport and skidded across Freeport Boulevard.
Twenty-two people were killed, half of them children. Mehren didn't know her daughter was there.
"Knowing where it was located, something just clicked," she remembered.
Mehren says she never saw her daughter's body. Her father identified the child.
After they buried Nancy, life became a blur for her and dozens of other families struggling to recover from their injuries with no local burn care facility. That's when a fire captain named Cliff Haskell, who was on duty that day, delivered.
Joe Pick proudly sat in front of a picture of his mentor Haskell.
"What he recognized was we had no burn care in Sacramento at the time. That became his mission," Pick said. "Within a year, he formed this organization - and within a year after that, we had a burn unit in Sacramento."
Pick now oversees the Firefighters Burn Institute, which has created kids camps and family camps serving thousands.
"A lot of these kids have never met anyone else who had a burn injury, and to get them with peers and other people who have had similar journeys was huge," Pick said.
The Firefighters Burn Institute has been instrumental in remembering the tragedy and the idea that has sparked what many call a life-saver. A memorial stands along Freeport Boulevard.
"I am very proud and happy to see what has been done for these children," said Mehren.
Mehren has volunteered for the organization. It was decades before she returned to the scene.
"And I stood there and I faced that runway and I did it," Mehren said with a lump in her throat.
"You just have to go on," she said as she wiped away a tear.
She raised two other daughters and remarried.
"As a family, we have pulled together," Mehren said.
The Firefighters Burn Institute will be celebrating 50 years strong this next year. It's funded through firefighter payroll contributions and community fundraisers like "fill the boot" campaigns. On Saturday, they will host the Farrell's 50th anniversary memorial ceremony at the City of Sacramento Public Safety Center along Freeport Boulevard.
