By Ryan Spoehr
SLN STAFF
The lives of Dave Kemna and Bill Frison hung in the balance last November after an airplane they occupied crashed near downtown Palmyra. They were burned badly and rushed to medical facilities.
They survived after quick actions by the Palmyra Public Safety Department and Emil Johnson, a village resident who lives nearby the crash site.
“They’ve done well,” Public Safety Director James Small said.
Last week, just a little more than three months after the crash, they requested to attend a Public Safety meeting to share their gratitude and appreciation for the officers who responded to the crash.
“I just want to say thank you to you guys,” said Frison, a Whitewater resident. “You got us out of there and got us help.”
Kemna also thanked the officers.
“I can’t tell you how much of a relief it was,” Kemna said. “If you got there a little later, we may not have made it.”
On Nov. 26 around 2:30 p.m., the plane went down in a wooded area near a swamp.
Frison and Kemna were taken by ambulance to hospitals to be treated for burns and other injuries.
Kemna said he doesn’t remember much after the incident and remembers very little of the ambulance ride.
“Whoever was in charge of that did a good job,” Kemna said.
Kemna was in the hospital for 10 days and then went to a Jefferson County nursing home for a month to recuperate. When he was in the hospital, he needed three units of blood as a result of his injuries.
Miraculously, Kemna was upright when officers responded to the crash site. He even called 911. However, Frison was still in the plane.
For more on the plane crash survivors, take a look at this week’s editions of The Enterprise of Palmyra and Eagle, and the Whitewater Register.
