Beloved Evangelist, Pilot William Carlson Pergerson Killed in Plane Crash on Way Home
A longtime pilot and Seventh-day Adventist evangelist, William Carlson Pergerson II, 48, of Berrien Springs, Michigan, died a fiery death on his way home last Thursday when his kit-built Long-EZ plane that he was flying exploded in a ball of fire. Pergerson, a married father of two, was flying alone.
The Battle Creek Airport in Michigan noted in a statement cited by the Adventist Review that shortly after he took off for the 20-minute flight home, Pergerson began experiencing suspected engine trouble which he relayed to the control tower.
Pergerson tried to land twice and during his second attempt at landing at about 8:19 p.m., the aircraft came down on a grassy field near one of the runways at the airport and exploded. By the time firefighters were able to put out the blaze, the only thing that was left was the charred engine of the plane and his logbook documenting the many trips he had taken across America.
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"We were able to salvage my husband's logbook out of the smoke," Pergerson's wife, Sharon, said on Sunday. "Wow, all the places that he had gone!"
Larry Bowron, Transportation Director at WK Kellogg Airport, told WWMT that while the kit-built Long-EZ plane is an experimental aircraft, it's a type that is generally considered safe.
"It's an aircraft that's considered in some cases experimental. But it's typically a very safe airplane. It has a set of canards on the front of the airplane that have a different camber than the main wings and what that does is prevents, supposed to prevent, the aircraft from stalling. Those canards on the nose lose lift so the nose drops before the airplane drops," he said.
Richard Kearns, a close friend for more than a decade, remembered the evangelist as "a hard-core legalist."
Pergerson was so focused on the rules that he once refused to "share the pulpit" with a a woman who was wearing a ring, Kearns told the Adventist Review. He asked the church where that incident took place for forgiveness a few years later.
