Pilot honored 50 years after death in Lake Monona
The Dane County Board Thursday night honored Gerald Stull, an Air Force flyer who crashed his jet into Lake Monona 50 years ago this week, thus preventing the disabled plane from hitting homes in neighborhoods near the lake and undoubtedly saving lives while he sacrificed his own.
Stull, 26, and a new father, was on a routine training flight from Truax Field and was returning to the base when his $2 million F-102A jet fighter developed engine problems that day. Rather than risk hitting any nearby housing, Stull purposefully plunged the plane into the waters of Lake Monona.
Stull tried to bail out of the plane at the last second but his parachute caught in the tail and he was dragged down, according to newspaper reports of the time.
Monday marked the 50th anniversary of that crash, and Thursday the Dane County Board unanimously passed a resolution honoring Stull, his widow, and his only son, who was three months old at the time his father perished.
"Whereas 50 years ago on May 5, 1958, Lt. Gerald Stull, a United States Air Force pilot stationed at Truax Field, sacrificed his life by crashing his disabled F-102A jet into Lake Monona to avoid hitting the densely populated Madison neighborhood surrounding Hudson Park," the resolution says, . . . "Be it Resolved that the Dane County Board of Supervisors hereby recognizes the heroism of Lt. Gerald Stull."
The resolution also experesses the board's gratitude to Stull's widow, Alice Baggett and his son, George Clark Stull, "for the sacrifice their husband and father made on behalf of the people of Madison."
The Friends of Hudson Park plan to place a memorial to Stull in the park to honor him, Bill White, one of the leaders of the organization says, but plans have been put on hold until the city finishes some construction work at the park. Initially it had hoped the memorial would be ready by the 50th anniversary of the crash, but now the group hopes to dedicate the memorial near the 51st anniversary.
The proposed plaque on the memorial will be similar to the County Board resolution and will honor Stull for his actions. "His selfless heroism saved the lives of many and he is rememberd and appreciated by the members of his community," the plaque will read. The plaque and the stone block on which it will be attached will be donated by Pechmann Memorials, White said.
Gerald and Alice Stull moved to Madison in the fall of 1957, and in February of 1958 their son George Clark Stull was born.
Gerald was a graduate of Texas A&M in civil engineering and had not decide whether, when his Air Force stint was up, he would return to engineering or re-enlist and make the Air Force his career.
Because of the events of May 5, 1958, he never got to make that decision.
Alice Stull packed up and moved back to Georgia with her son three weeks after the crash, but they were not forgotten by Madisonians. A trust fund in George Clark Stull's name was set up at a bank in Valdosta and by the time the boy was 15 there was about $9,500 in the account.
That allowed the son to attend college, grraduate and become a chiropractor.
"The people in Madison will never know how much they have meant to me," the young Stull said in 2003 from his home in Georgia. "Without them I couldn't have gone to college."
At the time, he was practicing in Macon, the hometown of another man who died in a plane crash in Lake Monona -- singer Otis Redding.
George Clark Stull has met Redding's widow, and the memorial in Macon put up to honor Redding sits less than a block from Stull's office.
White said he hopes Alice and George Clark Stull can be flown to Madison next year when the memorial to Lt. Gerald Stull will be dedicated.
Capital Times archives
The front page of The Capital Times the day after Gerald Stull's plane went down in Lake Monona 50 years ago.
