Gibbons Plane Crash Memorial Finds Home in Elkridge

Urging from a parent who lost her son in a plane crash brought a marble statue of the Virgin Mary to , according to The Baltimore Sun. 

The statue was installed at Baltimore's Cardinal Gibbons High School in 1968 to memorialize a teacher and three students killed in a plane crash that spring.

Charlotte Slavinotek, who is a parishioner at in Elkridge, asked the bishop to transfer the statue after St. Agnes Hospital said it planned to redevelop the defunct Cardinal Gibbons campus last year, reported The Baltimore Sun.

Slavinotek was the only surviving parent of the four victims, reported the Catholic Review. Her son, Michael, was one of three students killed; Paul DeMinnis and Mark Mitchell were the others in the plane with teacher Brother Bernard Borchers when it crashed May 15, 1968, in the mountains of western Maryland, according to a press release about the statue's rededication.

Borchers was the leader of the school's flight club, and the students were members, reported The Baltimore Sun.

The group was returning from a trip to the U.S. Air Force Museum, according to the press release announcing the rededication of the statue.

In November 2011, St. Augustine received the statue and restored it, before the Aug. 19 rededication after mass at the Elkridge church.

“This was their parish, their school, their families,” Slavinotek told Catholic Review at the ceremony. Her son and his friends had gone to grade school at St. Augustine School in Elkridge, according to the Catholic Review's report. 

See also:

• Statue from Cardinal Gibbons Rededicated (Catholic Review)
• Cardinal Gibbons Statue Moved to Elkridge Parish (The Baltimore Sun)