Sunday, Jul. 12, 2009

Answer Man: Traffic copter pilot foiled prison escape

Q. In a recent column about prison escapes involving helicopters, you wrote that you found no such attempts in Southern Illinois. But I seem to recall that some years ago a woman hired a local chopper pilot/traffic reporter and hijacked him in just such a plan. Could the Answer Man be wrong?

-- Sally Allan, of Collinsville; Jim Mertz; LuAnn Mattern; Dave Sheets, et al.

A. Ever hear of GIGO -- garbage in, garbage out? Well, the Answer Man has learned again that it's as true for the Internet as it is for computers.

In my defense, the inquiry in question asked about a). an actual escape from b). the Menard Correctional Center that happened c). in the 1980s. Based on those parameters, extensive searches on the wondrous World Wide Web turned up nothing even remotely related to Southern Illinois.

What I should have done was have an old-fashioned chat with my prize-winning colleague George Pawlaczyk. He immediately would have told me about the story he wrote on Allen Barklage when the veteran St. Louis eye-in-the-sky traffic reporter died in an experimental helicopter wreck in September 1998.

Such a reminder would have saved me from my own crash landing, because it had been Barklage who found himself in the gun sights of prison guards during a failed escape attempt at the U.S. Penitentiary in Marion (not Menard, a state institution).

May 24, 1978, (not the 1980s) had started off a fine spring day. Barklage, then a 30-year-old charter pilot, was expecting another relaxing flight when he agreed to take Barbara Oswald, who claimed to be a real estate agent, to examine property near Cape Girardeau, Mo.

At first, everything was routine as the two talked amiably about choppers and the weather. Suddenly, Oswald put a gun to the back of Barklage's head, ripped off his headphones and told him to fly to Marion to pick up three inmates at the penitentiary.

As Barklage soon learned, Oswald was no flying novice. She had been an air traffic controller in the Army and seemed to know the helicopter as well as he did. But Barklage, who had seen a co-pilot get half his face shot off during a mission in Vietnam, wasn't going down without a fight.

"I told her the only way to do this ... was to land without the doors on. That way the prisoners could run to the helicopter, jump in and take off," Barklage said in a 1992 News-Democrat interview about his plan to ditch the helicopter and make a run for it.

But Oswald had her own ideas -- which ultimately led to her downfall. She decided to remove the doors herself while the copter was in the air. But when the door opened, the loud noise startled her, giving Barklage an opportunity to grab her gun. When Oswald grabbed a second gun off the floor, a struggle ensued.

"During that time, the helicopter was out of control," Barklage said. "It went straight up and came down in a nose dive. We went from 2,200 feet to 600 feet."

But while Oswald was trying to get her gun cocked, Barklage fired five times, hitting the woman twice and killing her. Even so, he wasn't out of danger. When he finally landed outside the prison in the early evening, he was almost shot by guards who thought he was in on the break.

"I was more scared than I was in Vietnam because I had more time to think about it," he said in 1992. "I thought, 'After two years in 'Nam, here I am going to get shot by a civilian.' But I made it.'"

The following year, Barklage was honored by the Department of Justice for his courage. Before he died, Barklage would be honored yet again for rescuing a man who had jumped off the Poplar Street Bridge into the Mississippi River. And, the record of no successful helicopter escapes from a supermax prison remains intact.

Corrections and addendums

* Thanks to my good buddy Kent Knowles for giving me the rest of the story on what looks like a fallout shelter next to the former Belleville Surplus Store at 823 W. Main St.

When he was a child, Knowles often would ride around with his father, a taxi driver. When Dad needed to wet his whistle, Kent says he clearly remembers stopping at a bar there named the Subway or One-Eyed Charley's (not One-Eyed Jack's).

Either name was an apt one. Knowles says it was run by Charles Hangsleben, who had lost his right eye when he was just 4 years old. He had been running in front of a wagon on Lebanon Avenue when he ran into the wagon's "tongue" and fell.

Startled, a mule that was pulling the wagon stepped on the boy's face, crushing his eye. In 1909, the family sued and received $500 in compensation.

Hangsleben would go on to help organize the St. Clair County Anglers Association and eventually ran Club 13 on the outskirts of Belleville, where he lived with his wife, Martha. Even with one eye, he was remembered for once being the first to detect an influx of counterfeit quarters in the area. The father of two died in 1955 at age 50.

* In a recent answer on Lementon Road, which is located between New Athens and Freeburg, I neglected to say that John T. Lemen may be best remembered today for platting the town of Urbana on Nov. 11, 1836. In 1859, Urbana changed its name to Freeburg, and the village officially incorporated in April 1867.

* There's another option for Belleville area residents looking to recycle glass and other materials. While mentioning Phoenix Recycling, which moved to Fairview Heights, in a recent answer, I also should have suggested Tin Man Recycling, which accepts glass, paper, plastic and, of course, much metal scrap at 2795 South Belt West. It's open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays and 9 to noon on Saturday; check out the Web site at tinmanrecycling.com or call 277-4500.

* A verbal bouquet to Pat Holtgrave for suggesting MBC Greenhouse near Dupo as a possible source for hollyhocks. "It's an excellent source for plants," Pat wrote me. "More and more people are finding out about it every year." It's at 8697 Mullins Road at the Cahokia end of Triple Lakes Road. For information, call 538-7505.

* I managed to run into some outdated information about the Court Appointed Special Advocates. They no longer accept suitcases for foster children, Victoria Vasileff, the group's executive director tells me, and they're currently located at 110 N. High St. in Belleville.

* And, I'm told that the woman who was looking for information on a deceased aunt who was a nun for 75 years has received an obituary by e-mail from the convent in Beek en Donk, Holland.

Thank goodness the Internet sometimes can be TITO -- treasure in, treasure out.

Send your questions to Roger Schlueter, Belleville News-Democrat, 120 S. Illinois St., P.O. Box 427, Belleville, IL 62222-0427 or rschlueter@bnd.com