Springville man dies in glider crash
A Springville man died Monday afternoon after crashing a hang glider into power lines near Springville Junior High School.
Kent Melvin Warren, 59, took off heading north in an engine-powered ultralight glider from the junior high’s baseball field, but upon liftoff immediately ran into the power lines along 100 South. The lines sent his craft into the middle of 100 South, instantly killing Warren at 12:45 p.m.
Warren’s son, Sam, was on hand to help his dad with the flight.
“He floored it, didn’t get it off the ground in time, tangled himself into the wires and fell straight down,” Sam said. His father has always been a daredevil, he said, and this was simply the last in a long line of stunts. “You couldn’t talk him out of it. He didn’t have a death wish, but he always pushed it.”
It was Warren’s first flight with the glider, which Springville Police Lt. Dave Caron said had a two-cycle, three-prop engine, and was probably made by Air Creation. He purchased it a month ago, Sam said.
His plan was to take off southward, but decided the wind shifted, and went the other way, Caron said. He probably got airborne just a few yards before the baseball diamond, and didn’t have room to clear the lines.
It was to be his maiden voyage after staying grounded for several years; crashes in the 70s, including a hang-gliding crash at Snowbird Ski Resort, as well as a 200-foot fall into Utah Lake while parasailing, had kept him out of the air, Sam said. But he woke up Monday morning and decided it was a good day to fly.
“If his body had kept up with him, he would have done whatever crossed his mind,” he said.
Warren, a father of four, most recently worked in landscaping and energy efficiency audits with his son Sam, but he also once worked as a Springville city employee as well as a ski instructor at Sundance Ski Resort.
“He was friends with Robert Redford, taught Jim Lovell, the astronaut, how to ski; he taught the Osmonds how to ski — he even skied with Willie Nelson,” Sam said. Warren’s brother, Jerry Warren, was recently inducted into the National Ski Instructors Hall of Fame.
Ernie Parkin, a lifelong friend of Warren, said that just two days ago he’d tried to convince Warren to take off at the Spanish Fork/Springville Airport, but to no avail.
He recalled when they were teenagers, Warren was the only one that dared to help him jump his Pontiac Chieftain off a hill. Warren insisted that he be tied in the back seat with rope; they were close to liftoff when a rock tore out the fuel tank, Parkin said, “which was probably a good thing.”
“He’s a free spirit and a good guy,” Parkin said. “He’s had a lot of bumps in the road, but he’s been resilient. We just lost one of the best people in the whole world.”
Caron said since he began with Springville Police in 1980, the city has never had an airborne crash result in a fatality. Hang gliders have landed on barbed wire and dog houses, and hot-air balloons have clipped trees and wires, but nothing like this, he said.
Warren died on impact, not wearing any protection, though protection probably wouldn’t have even helped in a crash like this, Caron said.
The takeoff was not legal, and Caron cautioned others against similar attempts.
A few hours after the crash, Sam was already discussing an ideal funeral with friends, in which everybody would simply tell their favorite stories — of which there are many — about Warren.
“He died doing what he likes,” Sam said. “I just wish he could have gotten off the ground.”
The crash momentarily knocked power out for nearby Springville residents; as of 3 p.m., crews in cherry-pickers were working on repairing phone and TV lines, Caron said.
