demo_news
03-27-2006, 06:41 PM
At 50, Philip Semisch learned to fly. He took aerobatic lessons on his 60th birthday. When he turned 70, he flew gliders. Another aviation milestone followed just a few years later: He crashed. The retired Army officer and manufacturing executive from Skippack, Pa., was alone, piloting a small Decathlon plane in September 2002. It bounced as he tried to land, twice. As he took the plane back up for another landing attempt, he failed to clear a wall of trees and crashed.