From left, brothers Mike, Bill and Dave Knobbe pose for a portrait with a photo of their father, Colorado Air National Guard Maj. William Hodgson, and a wrecked airplane part at Wings Over the Rockies Air and Space Museum in Denver on Wednesday, June 14, 2023. Maj. Hodgson crashed in Nebraska on an F-80 Jet on Feb. 26, 1958. (Hyoung Chang, The Denver Post/TNS)
(Tribune News Service) — One afternoon, 65 years after the death of his father, Bill Knobbe woke from his daily nap at his home in Denver to a call from an unknown number. Taking a chance, he answered it.
“She asked me if my birth name was William Hodgson and I immediately sat straight up. I was flabbergasted,” Knobbe said. “She told me the story and I dropped everything to go right out to Nebraska that weekend.”
The caller was Colette Jessen from Grant, Neb., and she had been searching for Knobbe for more than a decade.
In 2012, Jessen and her husband Loren purchased land near Elsie, Neb., from an estate sale. While preparing the field for harvest, the two discovered a heavy, metal object partially buried in a divot.
When she unearthed the 3-foot-long mystery piece, Jessen discovered an engraving on one end that read “Major William Hodgson, crashed with F80 jet, Feb. 26, 1958.”
The metal found in the hollow is believed to be a piece of wreckage from the jet’s crash, later engraved by the land’s then-owner to mark the crash site, she said.
Hodgson had been flying for United Airlines and was a member of the Colorado Air National Guard.
On the day of the crash in 1958, Hodgson was on a routine training flight for the National Guard from Denver to New York when the jet went down in western Nebraska. Witnesses in the small town reported black smoke coming from the tail and a fireball on impact.
For years, Jessen tried to find Hodgson’s family, with no success. Originally, little access to the internet hindered the search, but her struggles continued even as resources for finding individuals online and reconnecting people with lost items expanded.
“We found an article in a local newspaper saying there was a crash, but we could never find any next of kin,” she said. “By this time, from other articles and other information, we knew Hodgson had five children, but we couldn’t find any of them on the internet.”
Several years ago, Jessen reached out to Stephanie Larson, of the Veteran Services Office in Grant, Neb., who posted the information in a social media group that had a history of tracking down lost individuals.
“The metal would just sit out in my shop or in my garage and I’d bring it in and take a picture of it, try to snoop around on the internet, but I could never get anywhere looking for it, so I reached out for help,” Jessen said.
When she saw the social media post, Sherry Hancock said she knew she wanted to help locate the family. Together, she and Susan Sonju, another group member, searched for relatives, but they didn’t have any luck until last month.
After Hodgson’s death, his wife remarried and her new husband adopted her children, giving them his last name: Knobbe.
“Once they figured that out, the rest was easy,” Jessen said.
She immediately reached out to Knobbe, the second oldest of Hodgson’s five children, who was 6 years old at the time of the crash.
At the invitation of the Jessens, Knobbe and his younger brother, Dave, traveled to Nebraska over Memorial Day weekend to retrieve the engraved piece.
“We were all pretty young when the crash happened, so by the time we were all adults a lot of those memories were disconnected and fragmented,” Knobbe said. “Being able to go up there and explore the past, especially seeing the crash site, I really think it helped us get closure.”
The Jessens gifted the metal wreckage to the brothers, and said they were grateful to have a heartwarming conclusion to the decade-long search.
“The research that has been done on our behalf is amazing,” Dave Knobbe said. “We’re incredibly grateful to everyone involved.”
The trip answered many of the pair’s questions, but some still remain, including what exactly caused the crash that claimed their father’s life.
Knobbe said he reached out to the Air Force Safety Center in New Mexico to obtain an accident report. He said the center’s spokesperson assured him they would be able to deliver the report, but couldn’t give a timeline.
“We’re also thinking about donating the piece to an aircraft museum here locally, alongside the articles and photos, to honor his memory,” Knobbe said.
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