by Ethan Carraway
Losing a loved one can be heart wrenching to the point where everything seems hopeless. I want to talk about a recent event where a whole community felt this pain a couple weeks ago.
The lives of many people on the coast of North Carolina changed on February 13th, 2022, when a plane with eight residents of the Down East community fatally crashed in the Atlantic Ocean near Drum Inlet.
There is no definite answer on what caused such a horrific event to happen, but we can only hope that it was painless. The NTSB has an ongoing investigation.
This story is not just a normal obituary to celebrate or mourn the lives of these lost souls, but also a personal story from my end and my parent’s.
One of the members in that fateful plane crash was the son of one of my dad’s closest friends, and his name was Jake Taylor.
Jake wasn’t just somebody who happened to be around when his dad and mine were hanging out: he was someone who helped those in need, and he was very intelligent, too. Jake was an outdoorsy person who loved hunting, fishing, and he was an avid member of Boy Scouts.
A memorial service will be held for him on Saturday, March 5th, 2022, but his real funeral this summer will be a symbolic Viking funeral. Jake told his dad that he wanted to be buried at sea with this type of funeral. Who could have known Jake's dad would be the one to carry out his wishes? A Viking funeral is when you put fireworks on a boat and set them off while the boat sails out to sea.
The prayers of the entire Down East community are being heard by not only Jake’s family, but also the families of Jonathan McInnis, Noah Styron, Michael Shepard, and the adults, Douglass Parks, Stephanie Fulcher, Ernest Rawls, and Jeffrey Rawls.
This tragedy will never be forgotten until the end of time for how much damage it did to so many lives. The worst part about it is that Jake has not been identified.
Still today, I’m sure that there are people hard at work trying to fill in the final piece of this unfinished puzzle in hopes that Jake’s mom and dad can find resolution.
Comments