The front page of the 3 April 1975 edition of The Caymanian Compass had this distressing headline: ‘Plane missing with 3 Caymanians aboard’. Official sources confirmed that there was no information on the whereabouts on the plane – which had left Grand Cayman on 28 March 1975 at 10am, heading to Fort Lauderdale and flown by an American pilot. The US Coast Guard had called off their search-and-rescue mission on 1 April. The Caymanians on board were Mark Coxe, 18; Steve Miller, 20; and Carlton Bodden, who was the co-pilot. According to reports from the US Federal Aviation Agency and Coast Guard, there had not been radar or radio contact with the plane.
A photo on page 1 showed a crew from WNEW-TV in New York who were in Grand Cayman doing a show on the economy of the islands, as well as on Mariculture, the precursor to the Cayman Turtle Centre. Assisting TV newsman Bill Jorgensen and cameraman Ken Agnew was Director of Tourism Eric Bergstrom. The show was scheduled to air on 15 April 1975, with the possibility of the report going national on the CBS network.
There was big news for Little Cayman with a fire engine arriving in Grand Cayman, waiting to be shipped for use at the airstrip. According to the report, the ‘fire appliance’ removes just one of the hurdles to make the Little Cayman airstrip operational for DC3 passengers aircraft. There was still a need to remove obstructions, particularly from the eastern end, and to level the runway.
The editorial, ‘Important day for an important document’, noted the first phase of the study by legislators of the proposed development plan for all three islands. The public were also to have access to the 200-page document, with the editorial saying, “It is OUR Development Plan for OUR country, and we should spare no effort as citizens in making our views known on these proposals.”
