Beyond the tourniquet of yellow police tape, Mary Jane Medlock looked at the mound of rubble still smoldering a few dozen yards away. The smoke billowing from the pile was all that remained of the Yankee Air Museum in Van Buren Township.
Before the flames overran the building, Medlock, 52, and three other museum volunteers pushed an 18,000-pound C47 airplane out of the World War II-era hangar and from harm's way.
"I'm not a hero," said Medlock, a Saline resident, whose left arm had a spray of red bruises from the rescue. "I just wanted to get them out, to save what we could, so we didn't lose everything."
Six area fire departments responded to the blaze, which started around 6:30 p.m. on Saturday. The cause of the fire is under investigation.
The fire destroyed the 63-year-old Willow Run Airport hangar, which became a museum in 1981. Designed by Albert Kahn and run by the Ford Motor Co., Willow Run was the largest war plant in the world after it opened in 1941, producing 8,685 bombers during World War II.
Among the other volunteers at the scene was Ken Chio. At the time of the fire, the 63-year-old retired GM pilot was driving a tug attached to a vintage B25 D -- which had just been flown back from an air show in Napoleon, Ohio. He quickly reversed direction and maneuvered the plane out of the hangar.
"I was backing the B25 in and I heard, 'Fire!,' " recalled Chio, who had donated a number of items from his stint in the Air Force during the Korean War and his father-in-law's World War I flight manual to the museum. "I saw smoke roll down the window on the second floor and I immediately backed the airplane out."
Another quick-thinking volunteer used a second tug to yank a B17 to safety.
The B25 D and two other flyable aircraft comprise the heart of the museum's collection. The museum's B25 D model, used in combat over Corsica and still pockmarked by German fire, is the only one of its kind still in existence, said Brian Higgins, member of the museum's board of directors. And its B17 is one of just five flyable ones remaining in the world, he said.
Everything else in the 40,000-square-foot museum -- memorabilia dating back as far as World War I, aviation reference materials, aircraft currently under restoration and a number of artifacts from the Air Force Museum near Dayton, Ohio, and the Marine Corps Air-Ground Museum in Quantico, Va. -- was destroyed.
Medlock and others at the scene also managed to salvage some toolboxes. The vintage aircraft on display in a nearby air park were unscathed.
"If the crew hadn't been there -- there was no one else in the museum -- we could've lost the aircraft," said Michigan Aerospace Foundation president Dennis Norton.
On Saturday night, Medlock and some friends had stayed late at the hangar to prepare for a flight to the Straits of Mackinac on Sunday. As they readied the plane and did the necessary paperwork, they discovered the fire. Highlighting the spirit of Yankee Air Museum team, the B25 D took off as scheduled Sunday morning, as volunteers cheered from ground.
Museum president Jon Stevens said the organization does carry some insurance, though he didn't specify how much or with what firm. Higgins said the building had never been cited for code violations, though it did not have sprinklers.
On Sunday afternoon, club members, some wearing aviation gear, stopped at Willow Run Airport to see what was left. A white cowboy hat was passed around for the cause and, within 20 minutes, was filled with $184 in cash. Elsewhere on the airport grounds, at the Michigan Institute of Aeronautics, the executive board and other volunteers discussed what happened and the next steps to be taken.
Willow Run Airport is lending the museum hangar space and the aeronautics school is offering office space in its building, Norton said.
"We've been working on plans for an expansion in two years," he explained, referring to a $5.5-million plan in existence before this weekend's tragedy. "We'll turn some of this to that effort."
Donations may be sent to the Michigan Aerospace Foundation, Yankee Air Museum Recovery Fund, P.O. Box 8282, Ann Arbor, MI 48107-8282. For updated information, call the museum hotline at 734-483-4030 or visit www.yankeeairmuseum.org.
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