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CRITTENDEN Gazaway Lamar
Birth: 4 Nov 1943
Death: 1 Aug 2007 Hanson, Mass.
Cause of Death: airplane crash
Notes
!PUBL
awt Lamar/Lamore
ssn 520484017 issued in Wyo in 1960
obit in 5 Aug 2007 Boston Globe
http://paw.princeton.edu/issues/2008/05/14/sections/memorials/1799/index.xml
Gazaway Lamar Crittenden Jr. '65
Published in the May 14, 2008, issue
Lem died Aug. 1, 2007, in the crash of his ultralight plane while he was attempting to
land at Cranland Airport in Hanson, Mass.
Lem was raised in Dover, Mass., prepping at Milton Academy. Quiet and reserved, but
kind to all, he seemed enigmatic to all but his closest friends.
Lem's roommates included Bob Mertz, Rick Morry, and Bill Crouch. He majored in
English and belonged to Quadrangle.
Commissioned as an Army lieutenant at graduation, Lem served in Vietnam as a
forward observer with the 1st Air Cavalry. Just before his death, Dan River Press
published his Vietnam novel, Jungle Rules, which he promoted in a month-long cross-
country tour.
Lem went to Yale Law School, worked in Boston for Palmer & Dodge and later
established his own office in Wellesley, specializing in technology matters. At the time
of his death, he was planning to retire to his family's 19th-century summer home in
Wareham, Mass.
Lem's wife, Gaily; his daughter, Joey; and his sister, Jenny, predeceased him. He is
survived by his daughter, Sarah; his parents, Mr. and Mrs. G.L. Crittenden Sr.; and his
sister, Penny. To them, the class extends its sympathy.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2007/08/02/pilot_killed_i
n_ultralight_plane_crash_in_hanson/?rss_id=Boston+Globe+--+City%2FRegion+News
Pilot killed in ultralight plane crash in Hanson
By April Yee, Globe Correspondent | August 2, 2007
HANSON -- Unlike others who would fly in groups, G. Lamar Crittenden liked to pilot
his ultralight plane alone, gliding 1,000 feet or higher above his Wareham home and
Onset Beach. Flying the tiny craft was the closest he could come to being a bird, he
told his family.
Crittenden, a 63-year-old lawyer, was killed early yesterday when his plane crashed
near the Cranland Airport runway in Hanson, a rural town about 30 miles south of
Boston. The state Aeronautics Commission, along with State Police and Hanson
police, are investigating.
As they gathered yesterday near the spot where the wreckage of the small plane stuck
out of the grass, pilots who knew Crittenden described him as an experienced aviator.
He tended to fly on weekday mornings when there were few other pilots around the
hangar in Middleborough, where he kept his plane. He probably started his outing
yesterday before 8 a.m., checking his 5-gallon fuel tank and the orange cloth that
forms the wings of the plane, which can be assembled from a kit.
"It's kind of like a hang glider with a lawn mower motor on it," said Joseph P.
Yakavonis, a Hanson police lieutenant. The Challenger could fly up to 70 miles per
hour.
"He was a very good pilot, very safe, never took risks," said Chip Diggins, 46, of
Middleborough.
At 8:53 a.m., police responded to a crash in Hanson. The propeller, which sits behind
the pilot, was split down the middle. It can be damaged by any loose objects in the
cockpit.
Pilots wondered why the plane's emergency parachute, which can be deployed at
altitudes as low as 100 feet, was unused.
Crittenden had been flying for more than a decade, said his daughter, Sarah Mason
Crittenden, 37, of Plainfield.
"He was a very enigmatic and private person," she said.
He grew up in Dover and majored in English at Princeton University and studied at
Yale Law School. In 1966 and '67 he served in Vietnam as a forward observer in the
Army's First Cavalry Division. He later practiced law for technology companies in
Lexington and Boston, his daughter said.
Crittenden wrote about his wartime experiences in a work of fiction titled "Jungle
Rules," published in March 2006 by Dan River Press in Maine. To promote his book,
he jumped into his sport utility vehicle for a monthlong tour, speaking to veterans'
groups as far away as California.
"He was an eccentric guy who loved life, and he just did his thing and was always up
for trying something new. The world without him seems like a very, very strange
place," his daughter said.
Parents
CRITTENDEN Gazaway B. Lamar ("Lamar") (15 Apr 1918 - 8 Apr 2008)
SHAW Gertrude Bramwell ()
Siblings
CRITTENDEN Gazaway Lamar (4 Nov 1943 - 1 Aug 2007)
CRITTENDEN Penelope Shaw ()
CRITTENDEN Jane Mason ("Jenny") (1949 - 28 May 2005)
Marriage To ----- Gaily ()
m.
Notes
Children by ----- Gaily
CRITTENDEN Joanna ("Joey") ( - BEF 2007)
CRITTENDEN Sarah Mason ()
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