Boardman natives feared lost in Cleveland plane disappearance
Staff/wire report
BOARDMAN
When Wendy Kish started middle school in Boardman, she didn’t know a single person.
That quickly changed one day at recess, when young Suzanne Armeni skipped over to her.
“Hi, my name is Suzie. What’s your name?” Suzanne asked.
“That was it. We were best friends after that,” Kish- Grohovsky, now a teacher at Canfield High School, said of her friend, who was among the six passengers on the private plane that went missing over Lake Erie on Thursday night.
Boardman natives Suzanne and John T. Fleming, their two sons, and two others were on a Cessna Citation 525 that the U.S. Coast Guard was searching for Friday.
The Coast Guard said it had to suspend its search at 7:30 Friday night and was expected to resume today.
John, chief executive of a Youngstown-started beverage distribution company, Superior Beverage Co., was piloting the plane when it quickly lost altitude after takeoff from Cleveland’s Burke Lakefront Airport and vanished from radar, according to his family and a flight-tracking service Friday.
John’s parents, who live in Canfield, confirmed he was piloting the Columbus-bound plane when it disappeared late Thursday about 2 miles over Lake Erie.
Fleming’s father, John W. Fleming, said the other five people on the plane were Fleming’s wife, teenage sons Andrew and Jack, a neighbor and the neighbor’s daughter. He described his son as “an experienced pilot.”
The aircraft was headed to Ohio State University Airport northwest of downtown Columbus.
Crews combing Lake Erie for the plane remained hopeful the occupants could be found alive, and were in search-and-rescue mode, not recovery mode, as they plied waters about 50 feet deep, said Capt. Michael Mullen, the chief of response for the Ninth Coast Guard District.
“While search-and-rescue operations are underway, we are focusing our efforts on supporting the families involved,” said Joseph R. McHenry, executive vice president of Superior Beverage Group, in a statement. “We are working closely with the proper authorities conducting the investigation. We appreciate the efforts of the first responders on the scene. As we all await the results of the search-and-rescue efforts, our hearts are with John, his wife, their sons, and close friends on board, as well as with their loved ones and everyone in the Superior Beverage family.”
Tracking service FlightAware logged only three location pings for the plane after takeoff from Burke, and the last one indicated rapid altitude loss. Authorities have said the pilot issued no distress signals.
The aircraft took off westward from Burke, then turned north across the lake, according to the tracking service flightradar24.com. The departure procedure at Burke could take an aircraft north over the lake before turning south toward a destination, Mullen said.
The plane, which had made the roughly half-hour trip from Columbus earlier in the day, is registered to a limited liability company under the same Columbus address as Superior Beverage.
Authorities have detected “faint hints” but no strong pulse from an emergency locating transmitter, a beacon that could help find the plane, Mullen said. Searchers have found no sign of debris.
“We’re very hopeful. We will be very hopeful up until the point that we have to turn the search off and we switch over to assisting with recovery,” Mullen said at Friday news conference.
But when asked about the possibility of the two-engine jet landing safely on Lake Erie, Mullen said, “Aircraft are not designed to float, especially in 12-foot seas.”
The search overnight was made difficult by snow squalls, high seas and darkness, Mullen said. Weather prevented smaller Coast Guard boats in the Cleveland area from launching.
A U.S. Coast Guard helicopter and a Royal Canadian Air Force plane were used along with a Coast Guard ship from Detroit in the search.
It would have been the pilot’s responsibility to determine whether it was safe to fly, Mullen said.
The Federal Aviation Administration said the Cessna Citation 525 plane left Burke at 10:50 p.m., and the Coast Guard said it was notified about the missing plane by air traffic control at Burke about 30 minutes later. Investigators from the FAA and National Transportation Safety Board were expected to arrive Friday in Cleveland.
The Flemings were 1989 graduates of Boardman High School. John was the valedictorian of the class and later went on to work for his family’s beverage company that was headquartered on Victoria Road in Austintown.
Kish-Grohovsky, who was a close friend of Suzanne’s in middle school and high school, was sickened to hear the news about her friend.
“I just can’t wrap my head around it,” she said when reached by The Vindicator. “It was just like the perfect couple, who had the perfect family, the perfect life.”
In addition to their first meeting in middle school, a memory that stood out to Kish-Grohovsky was Suzanne’s winning the “Best Dressed” award for her class.
She recalled her friend as having a beautiful smile and a kind heart.
“She was like the mother of our group. She kept us out of trouble,” she said.
Mike Masucci, principal at Poland Union Elementary, who was friends with the women in high school and attended a school dance with Suzanne, also noted her smile.
“For those who did not know her well, I think she came across as a quiet, reserved person. But to those who knew her really well, she had that quiet, unique sense of humor,” he said. “She had a helluva smile. Just a lot of fun to be around.”
Kish-Grohovsky also knew John, and remembers the couple dating in high school.
“They seemed perfect for each other because they were both just the nicest people in our class,” she said.
Kish-Grohovksy and Suzanne Fleming had fallen out of touch in recent years, and Kish-Grohovsky had been meaning to reach out.
“I think about her all the time,” she said.
The Flemings now live in Dublin, a suburb near Columbus.
“We are deeply saddened by this news,” Dublin Mayor Greg Peterson said. “Dublin City Council, City of Dublin staff and the Dublin Irish Festival family are keeping all of those on board the flight in our thoughts and prayers.”
Superior Beverage is now based in Columbus. The business has more than 650 employees and services 37 counties in Northeast and Central Ohio delivering 500 wine, beer and nonalcoholic beverages to more than 12,000 retailers, according to its website.
Superior was started in 1922 by Marion N. Antonucci as the Superior Wholesale Grocery Co. in Youngstown, according to the company’s website. After the Great Depression, Antonucci entered into the wholesale beer and wine delivery business and created the Superior Beverage Co. Antonucci was considered a leader among the Italian immigrants of Youngstown, according The Vindicator files.
Antonucci’s son, John (Jack) R. Antonucci, ran the company from 1940 until 1984.
The company expanded from its Youngstown origin into several new markets including Akron, Steubenville, Canton, Lorain, Columbus, Cleveland and Texas.
Superior has two locations: one in Columbus and one in Glenwillow, Ohio. The former Austintown Superior location is now occupied by RL Lipton Distributing Co.
Contributors: Jordyn Grzelewski and Kalea Hall.