Submitted by David Palmer

“Plane Crash Near Mina—One Killed” was the headline in the Aberdeen newspaper.

If you were to have heard the headline you immediately thought of the Payne Stewart crash in late 1999 just south of Mina in Richland Township. Who could forget it? The event was covered worldwide, and Mina was famous for a few days.

But the “one killed” part, that couldn’t be right because you remembered that there were several casualties that day. But the headline is correct, Richland Township in southeast Edmunds County is home to a second fatal plane crash and it just so happens that this month is the 100-year anniversary of the first, but not as famous fatal crash.

The headline was in the Aberdeen Daily American, April 23rd 1921. A second paper, the Aberdeen Daily News carried a story about the crash as well. Both articles can be found in the Aberdeen American News historical archives.

My Grandfather, Will Palmer, was witness to that fatal crash that occurred late the afternoon of April 22. Grandpa Will, 25 at the time, was working in his field doing springs work when a brand-new Curtiss aero plane (that’s 1921 talk) piloted by 26-year-old Frank Wells, came flying from the east and landed nearby. The plane was newly purchased in Minneapolis and the pilot just three weeks out of flight school. A passenger got on board for a joy ride, an unthinkable novelty for the time.

The first ever passenger for the new plane and new pilot was Edward Labisky, a 30-year-old single farmer who had just recently taken over his father’s farm located four miles south of the present-day Glacial Lakes Energy plant. The Payne Stewart crash sight lies approximately 1.5 miles north of the Labisky homestead. Wells had been employed by Labisky before he became a pilot, and he flew back from Minneapolis in the new plane to show it off to his old boss and offer him a ride.

How does one prepare for their first plane ride? In our world today we’ve grown up riding carnival rides at the Brown County Fair and roller coasters at Valley Fair. We’ve driven motorcycles, four-wheelers, and driven our cars faster than the speed limit. But in 1921 on the prairie of South Dakota, where most things still happened at 1 horse power, very few knew how to swim let alone what it would feel like to go fast and up into the air. A farmer who’s used to his feet on the ground and without any prep for something this radically new may have been what brought this joy ride to a tragic halt.

The Aberdeen Daily News in a more detailed article whose headline says that “Labisky Lost Nerve”. “Literally losing his head” (they don’t write them like that anymore) got excited, panicked and grabbed the joy stick when about 300 feet in the air causing pilot Wells to lose control of the plane which then nose-dived into the ground. Many people had been watching the machine in the air, saw the sudden plunge, and rushed to the scene where Labisky was killed instantly and Wells seriously hurt.

Did he literally lose his head? I don’t know, but his funeral was two days later at the Presbyterian church in Mina and he’s buried in Riverside Cemetery in Aberdeen. My Grandpa’s story of the crash, as told to my cousin Del Palmer, lines up exactly with the Daily News article, although he believed the crash to be a bit farther south, closer to the former town of Albion.

The Payne Stewart crash will be the only story you’ll find when doing an internet search about Edmunds County plane crashes. That’s because a celebrity died in the tragedy, but Edward Labisky’s crash will always be the first, literally.