JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – On Oct. 20, 1977, a Convair CV-240 airliner took off from Greenville, South Carolina.
There were 24 passengers inside the charter flight that Thursday evening including, crew and band members of Lynyrd Skynyrd, a Jacksonville-based southern rock band that created hits like “Free Bird” and “Sweet Home Alabama.”
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The band had just released its fifth studio album three days earlier and took off in the airplane, with “Lynyrd Skynyrd” painted on the side, bound for its next concert in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, on Friday night.
But the flight never arrived.
An NTSB report later revealed the aircraft ran out of fuel mid-flight due to “inadequate flight planning” and an engine malfunction that caused “higher-than-normal fuel consumption.” It crashed into a heavily wooded area during an attempted emergency landing 5 miles northeast of Gillsburg, Mississippi.
In Jacksonville, Channel 4 broke into “The Newlywed Game” just after the 11 O’clock News with a bulletin to report the crash.
Young anchor Tom Wills, who had just arrived two years earlier, was in the newsroom that night when the phones began to ring. Callers, including loved ones of those involved, were desperate for information about what happened.
“I was not familiar with the band’s music, but our 11 o’clock producer, Mark Darden, was. I was soon to get an education about Lynyrd Skynyrd,” Wills said this week, recounting that night nearly 47 years ago.
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It was later revealed that four passengers were killed in the crash, including Lynyrd Skynyrd lead vocalist and founding member Ronnie Van Zant, guitarist and vocalist Steve Gaines, backing vocalist Cassie Gaines and assistant road manager Dean Kilpatrick. Captain Walter McCreary and First Officer William John Gray also died in the crash, and the rest of those on board were badly injured.
Wills, who is retiring on Friday, took some time to look back on covering the story of Lynyrd Skynyrd, a story that left a deep mark on him and followed him all the way through his 49 years at News4JAX.
Wills walks among the wreckage
The day after the crash, News Director Joe Moreland, who had ties to Baton Rouge and was a Lynyrd Skynyrd fan, decided to send Wills and photographer Joe Coppoletta to the scene, and Moreland had the connections to facilitate the trip.
Moreland knew a private pilot who flew for his former Baton Rouge station and arranged for that pilot to fly Wills and Coppoletta between Baton Rouge and McComb, Mississippi, the closest airport to Gillsburg and the wooded area where the plane went down.
But there was a snag.
“Channel 4 had just switched from 16mm film to portable 1-inch videotape. No one on our staff had ever taken the equipment on an airline flight, and neither we nor the airline knew how to transport this gear. It wound up in the overhead compartment. When we landed at Baton Rouge airport, the camera wouldn’t work. I can still visualize Coppoletta on the terminal floor frantically trying to fix it,” Wills said.
They took the broken camera to Moreland’s former station, and even though the engineers there had no direct experience with “minicams,” Wills said they got it working again and saved the day.
But then it was time to get to work documenting the tragedy. Nothing could have prepared Wills for what he saw at the crash site.
“There are no words to describe the impact of standing silently in the woods surrounded by the personal belongings of men and women who died there, men and women who were horribly injured there, and the shattered wreckage of a machine that used to fly,” Wills said.
Wills was the only Jacksonville reporter to have walked amongst the wreckage of the plane in the woods, and he shared the tragic story with thousands of mourning hometown fans and beyond.
What he saw that day was recounted in the 1977 documentary “Need All My Friends.”
In it, Wills’ legendary voice and delivery were on display as he detailed what happened that fateful night and spoke to witnesses and survivors.
“You can’t even realize seeing one of these things on television, exactly what a crash of this magnitude looks like,” Wills reported while standing in front of the scattered metal. “Up there sitting against a tree is a piece of an airplane wing torn away from the rest of the airplane.”
Friendship from tragedy
Wills first met Billy Powell, Lynyrd Skynyrd keyboardist and crash survivor, when Powell flew home a few days after the crash. Powell arrived at Air Kaman adjacent to the Jacksonville airport. His nose was stitched up and cuts were visible on his face.
“I believe he agreed to let me interview him because of a decision I had made when he and other injured survivors were hospitalized in McComb and Jackson, Mississippi,” Wills said. “Friends of the band who had come to McComb asked me not to go to the hospitals and to give the injured their privacy. I agreed not to go to any of the hospitals.”
Wills said he will never forget how Powell described the crash.
“All I saw was treetops,” Powell said during the interview. “I looked out my window, I was in the middle of the airplane on the right wing. I tried to get as close to the back of the airplane as possible. I got in the middle of the airplane near the right wing, and all I saw was treetops. At first, it wasn’t so bad, but when we hit the middle of the trees, it was horrible. It was an experience nobody wants to ever experience.”
IMAGES: Lynyrd Skynyrd then and now | EXTENDED: Tom Wills’ interview with Gary Rossington
Over the years, Wills and Powell would run into each other and soon discovered they had a bond, one shared through tragedy.
Wills said the friendship really took off in 2001 at the Super Bowl in Tampa. Former Channel 4 Sports Director Sam Kouvaris and Wills were there covering the game and because Lynyrd Skynyrd was playing a concert there that Super Bowl weekend, they covered that, too.
“Billy and I greeted each other like brothers,” Wills said.
There was just chemistry between the two before Powell died in 2009.
Over the many years since the crash, Wills also managed to stay connected with the Van Zant family and other band members.
“I don’t bother anyone connected to the band needlessly. They graciously take my calls and answer my texts when I reach out, and I only reach out for newsworthy reasons. I’m especially grateful to Rickey Medlocke, Johnny Van Zant, and Ronny Van Zant’s widow, Judy,” Wills said.
But it wasn’t just Powell who became connected to Wills, it was Lynyrd Skynyrd fans, as well.
“They have been so loving and affectionate and appreciative since Joe Coppoletta and I produced a news special about the band and the crash which aired on Channel 4 within days of the tragedy,” Wills said, referencing “Need All My Friends.”
Looking back
In October 2019, Wills returned to the crash site for the first time in 42 years. The occasion was the unveiling of a roadside memorial near where the plane went down.
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Wills covered the ceremony and interviewed survivors still dealing with lingering injuries after all these years. He also spoke to rescuers who still live nearby.
Wills produced a documentary, “The Legacy of Lynyrd Skynyrd,” which he said he regards as “perhaps the TV program of which I am most proud in my career.”
In his 49 years at WJXT, Wills helped guide the station through its transition from a CBS affiliate to an independent station in 2002; covered two space shuttle disasters, the 9/11 terror attacks and various political scandals; witnessed first-hand the birth of the Jacksonville Jaguars in 1995 and endured months co-anchoring the news with Mary Baer from a card table in his home during the COVID-19 pandemic.
But the story of Lynyrd Skynyrd will always hold a unique place in the brightest — and darkest — parts of Wills’ soul.
Wills still remembers in the late 1990s when a TV producer from Hollywood came to Channel 4 and interviewed him about the Lynyrd Skynyrd crash for the VH1 series, “Behind the Music.”
During the interview, Wills said his emotions got the best of him as he described what he saw in those woods almost 20 years earlier.
“It was then that I realized that walking amid the personal belongings scattered on the ground of people who were dead or terribly injured was traumatizing,” Wills said. “We reporters are professional observers. We’re also like everyone else, frail human beings.”
