The monument includes three 14-foot-wide, 8-foot-tall black granite monuments with drawings of the band and text that tells the history of Lynyrd Skynyrd and what happened on the night of the crash. The board also garnered financial help from the current Lynyrd Skynyrd band, McDaniel said. The board started a GoFundMe account to help raise thousands of dollars for the project. The group encountered various roadblocks until Dwain Easley and his wife Lola Easley donated some of their private land near the crash site for the monument on Easley Road. But we changed the focus from a sign to a granite marker,” McDaniel said. The initial sign location was approved on state property beside Highway 568. “We set a deadline of one year and kept expanding our project. They often discussed wanting to get a sign or highway marker posted near the site because it was so hard for people to find. McDaniel said he and some of the other crash rescuers liked to get together on the anniversary each year at the plane crash site. McDaniel, 65, is the president of the monument board. I think it will have a very positive impact on our local economy here,” Wilson said. Fans and followers will continue to visit the monument for years to come. “The monument has been visited by fans from 45 states and eight foreign countries. “At the time of the crash, I was not familiar with Lynyrd Skynyrd, however, thousands of people were,” said Wilson, 70, a board member of Magnolia Electric Power, the electric cooperative that provides service to the Gillsburg area. Thanks to the efforts of Wilson, McDaniel, Easley and other members of The Lynyrd Skynyrd Monument Project Board, a plane crash memorial was erected and opened to the public in October 2019. Today, about 800 yards from the actual site of the crash, fans of the band and tourists have a place to go to pay their respects to the people who lost their lives that night and to visit a spot where a piece of somber rock history was made. Wilson, McDaniel and Easley - all in their early 20s at the time - carried bodies and survivors from the plane through the swampy and muddy muck of the ground to a nearby road. The crash killed Lynyrd Skynyrd lead singer and songwriter Ronnie Van Zant, guitarist Steve Gaines, Gaines’ sister, Cassie Gaines, a backup singer, assistant road manager Dean Kilpatrick and the pilot and co-pilot. The Convair CV-240 passenger plane ran out of fuel and crashed right after dusk in the woods of Gillsburg. The plane was transporting the Southern rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd from Greenville, South Carolina to a concert in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Wilson, McDaniel, Easley and others in the area had no idea who was on the plane and, frankly, they didn’t care. They were first responders before the official first responders arrived on the scene.ĭennis Wilson, Bobby McDaniel and Dwain Easley all lived close to the pine tree scattered terrain in Gillsburg where a plane crashed the night of Oct.
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