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Throwback: Delta mayor, children escape death

Delta’s newly elected mayor has a brush with death in late 1973. In a scary incident, Tom Goode, 39, who was elected a couple of weeks prior, escaped injury when the helicopter he was a passenger in crashed into a farmer’s field on River Road.
delta optimist throwback
One of Tom Goode's children landed upside down in the 1973 helicopter crash and had to be pulled from his seat belt.

Delta’s newly elected mayor has a brush with death in late 1973.

In a scary incident, Tom Goode, 39, who was elected a couple of weeks prior, escaped injury when the helicopter he was a passenger in crashed into a farmer’s field on River Road.

His three children were also passengers and fortunately they also escaped injury, as well as the pilot.

Goode was out to view the site of a proposed government industrial development.

The crash occurred only moments after the Hiller SL4 helicopter had taken off on River Road, from Delta heliport, bound for Tilbury.

It was the same helicopter that had brought Santa Claus to Ladner earlier that Saturday, Dec. 8 morning.

The pilot, Konrad Busch, told the Delta Optimist he was just taking off when he noticed a “jerking” movement in the machine’s main stick.

He said the next thing he knew, the helicopter was wobbling from side-to-side in “an erratic manner”.

delta throwback

As Santa climbed out of the helicopter earlier in the day to the delight of youngsters waiting to greet him in Ladner, no one had any idea the same machine would be involved in a scary wreck

 

“’I thought it was the end,” said Busch, whose wife and children saw the chopper crash into the muddy field.

The pilot said the bubble on the front of the machine blew open and Goode became covered in mud to his waist.

The motor was still running after the crash.

The $80,000 helicopter was a write-off.

Standing six-feet-six, Goode was the first North Deltan elected mayor.

Goode, who was previously a Member of Parliament, was out of office by the end of the 1970s.

He passed away in the mid-1990s.

delta optimist throwback

Delta’s new mayor Tom Goode gets a kiss from his wife Inge following his resounding victory in November 1973