Phil Bradley greets families before the October 31, 2009 ceremony. Click image for slideshow.

Fifty years after the crash of Flight 349, Phil Bradley, the sole survivor, came back to the Crozet area to preside over the October 31 commemoration ceremony. Attendees noted that the weather was eerily similar to the weather 50 years earlier, when Bradley spent a day and a half on Bucks Elbow Mountain. Charlottesville was only supposed to be a brief stopping point for many of the passengers of the ill-fated flight, but it turned out to have lasting impact for friends and family of the 26 people who died in the crash. Bradley remembered them by rededicating the monument he erected a decade ago.

Phil Bradley at the site of the monument he erected

Phil Bradley, the sole survivor of Piedmont Flight 349 was interviewed by Charlottesville WINA-AM radio host Coy Barefoot on Wednesday, October 14. The show has been podcast. (The same day, a well-known Charlottesvillian named Ken Staples, who worked on body recovery at the crash site, also appeared on the radio program.)

The event will take place here at the memorial

Fifty years to the day, after the long day the injured survivor of Piedmont Flight #349 spent cold and alone on Buck’s Elbow Mountain, he’s coming back to commemorate the event and remember his fellow passengers who weren’t so lucky.

Ernest Philip “Phil” Bradley plans to host a ceremony at 10am on October 31 at the site of the memorial he had constructed a decade ago in Mint Springs Valley Park, just 500 yards from the Albemarle County crash site.

Flight 349 crashed around 8:40pm on Friday, October 30, 1959. All 26 others aboard died, but after 36 hours alone on the mountain, he was found Sunday morning by rescuers.