A trailblazing female industrial shop teacher in Somers Point who overcame a fear of heights to develop a second career in aviation was killed in a North Carolina plane crash Tuesday, her brother said.
Barbara Harris-Para, 69, had also
worked for the Federal Aviation Administration’s William J. Hughes
Technical Center in Egg Harbor Township and was a former president of
the Mullica Township Board of Education.
She died when a plane her husband
was piloting, their single-engine Beechcraft A-36 Bonanza, crashed into
woods during a landing attempt at Siler City Municipal Airport, North
Carolina media outlets reported.
Frederick Para, 72, who suffered
broken bones and other injuries in the crash, is hospitalized and was
unaware Wednesday that his wife had died, Harris-Para’s brother Kenneth
Harris said.
The couple, who were married for
more than 30 years, lived in the Sweetwater section of Mullica Township
before moving to North Carolina in 2006.
“She’s had a big, long career and I just wish I had half her energy,” said Harris, who lives in Arizona.
Harris-Para was a flight
instructor and was once governor of the New Jersey/New York section of
the Ninety-Nines, a women’s flying club founded by aviation pioneer
Amelia Earhart.
For her, aviation was not a childhood dream, but it turned into one later in life.
“She was always afraid of
heights, believe it or not. She decided she would learn how to fly to
overcome her fear of heights. Then she really got into it,” her brother
said.
Over the next 30 years, she
became a very experienced pilot and a flight instructor and, after
retiring from teaching in 1998, she worked for the FAA as a Freedom of
Information Act officer, he said.
Harris-Para was born in Massachusetts and lived in South Jersey most of her life.
Her Linked In profile says she
graduated from Williamstown High School in 1963, a time when she was
allowed to work in woodshop and metal shop only after school.
After college, she went on to
teach those subjects and mechanical drawing to seventh- and
eighth-graders in Somers Point for decades before retiring in 1998.
“When she was in high school back
in the ’60s, they did not let females in shop classes. She joined a
shop club, and I still have the bookcases she made in my home,” Kenneth
Harris said. “She was always encouraging female students to learn how to
use tools.”
Susan Dugan, now the principal of
the Jordan Road School in Somers Point, taught across the hallway from
Harris-Para’s class for about eight years.
“It was so good for the girls to
see that it was not something that was gender-oriented,” she said. “The
custodians used to go in there all the time and talk to her.”
“She was really a woman before her time, or maybe of the time,” Dugan said.
Harris-Para served on the Mullica Township Board of Education for nearly 18 years, including 10 as president.
She stepped down in 2006.
“We’re just deeply saddened that
such a vibrant woman would be tragically lost, actually doing something
she completely loved doing — flying,” said Barbara Rheault, Mullica
Township Education Association president, who was nearby neighbors with
Harris-Para in Sweetwater.
“She was a very well-respected
and forward-thinking woman, extremely civic-minded, and she generally
cared about the betterment of her community,” Rheault said.
A tribute to Harris-Para’s
community involvement still exists in a popular photograph taken at the
Mullica Township school in 2000.
Students, staff and teachers assembled in a back lot of the school to make a “2000” visible from the air.
A parent took the photo from an airplane.
A parent took the photo from an airplane.
And Harris-Para piloted that plane.
“That was a lasting tribute because we still have those pictures hanging in the school. And she flew the plane,” Rheault said.
Janet Kinsell, communications and
training technician lead at the William J. Hughes Technical Center,
described Harris-Para as “full of energy.”
“She truly had a wealth of
knowledge and was willing to share her experiences and knowledge with
everyone,” Kinsell said. “But it was her warmth and generous spirit that
will be missed the most.”
On Wednesday, the National Transportation Safety Board was working with the FAA on the investigation.
An assistant manager at Siler
City Municipal Airport told The News and Observer on Tuesday the Paras
were trying to land following a flight for maintenance.
A low ceiling prevented the
airplane from approaching the 5,000-foot runway from one side, so the
pilot circled to land from the other way, Ben Marion told The News and
Observer.
A North Carolina State Highway Patrol trooper told WRAL.com that the engine stalled and the plane had a loss of power at about 8 a.m. Tuesday.
The investigation into the crash is continuing.
Probable causes of fatal plane crashes can take a year or longer to determine.
Contact: 609-272-7253
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