MORGAN HILL, Ca. — After seeing The Journal’s Aug. 21 story about Del Monte Corporation’s plans to close the Sleepy Eye plant over the coming months, a former seasonal employee recalled his time in sweet corn fields around Sleepy Eye decades ago.

Frank Busch of Morgan Hill, Ca., said he worked for Del Monte in the summers of 1949 through 1954. He recalled an Aug. 15, 1949 fatal plane crash involving a corn duster near Cambria.

“I worked with the crop dusting and spraying of peas and corn while in high school and college,” Busch said in an email. “I was one of the flag men when the Piper Cub (airplane) crashed (five and one-half miles) east of New Ulm.”

According to the Aug. 15, 1949, New Ulm Daily Journal, Kirby Smith, flying for a Pecatonica, Ill, flying service crashed into a hillside overlooking the Minnesota River bottom shortly before 5 a.m. on the Peyton Nichols farm that day.

Witnesses said the plane made a run over the bottomland field, circled off beyond a hill and came back for another run when the airplane nosed down into the hillside and burned, according to the story.

“Mechanical trouble apparently developed. The plane suddenly nosed down and plummeted into the hillside,” continued the story. “An explosion followed the crash and the plane burst into flames. The pilot was jammed between the engine and fuselage of the plane. Little or nothing was left of the plane except the metal fuselage.”

The story read that the plane burned with such heat, metal melted. Blobs of molten metal, cooled by the earth, were found near the plane wreckage.

Busch’s flag man job involved standing at either end of fields and holding red flags to indicate the area to be sprayed.

“In 1951, (Del Monte) bought four Farmall Cs (tractors) converted to high boy spray rigs with hanging nozzles that covered eight rows of corn with each pass,” Busch said. “I operated one of those rigs for four summers, covering every area around Sleepy Eye where sweet corn was grown.”

Busch recalled Del Monte field manager John Wilhite as “a great guy for work for.”

Regarding the Del Monte plant closure announcement, Busch said he could relate to it.

“I can appreciate the impact a plant has on a community,” Busch said. “I experienced a similar situation when General Electric Nuclear Division closed its doors in San Jose right after I retired in 1995. Hopefully another company will purchase the Sleepy Eye plant.”

Busch worked at the 53-acre GE plant site as a project engineer for 40 years. He said a big shopping center is now located where the plant was.

Prior to working at GE in California, Busch worked for General Electric Hanford Operations in Richland, Wa., doing non-destructive testing engineering.

Busch, who grew up on a farm near Morris, studied at Dunwoody College of Technology and San Jose State University.

He restores antique John Deere tractors as a hobby now.

Fritz Busch can be emailed at fbusch@nujournal.com.