Story originally printed in the La Crosse Tribune or online at www.lacrossetribune.com
Published - Wednesday, May 07, 2008
Pilot killed in Green County plane crash designed Julia Belle Swain
MADISON — Friends said Tuesday that Dennis Trone was the consummate pilot, whether in the air in his home-built plane, in the water as a fabled river pilot for excursion boats, or in a tough situation.
In the close-knit community of river boat pilots, he was a legend who not only piloted but built his own boats, including the Julia Belle Swain, well-known on the Mississippi and in La Crosse.
“Especially in a crisis, he just took over,” said Art Thieme, who sang folk music on Trone’s paddleboat tours of the Illinois River.
Trone, 77, of Petersburg, Ill., died when his plane crashed late Monday afternoon shortly after taking off from the Brodhead Airport, where he kept several aircraft.
According to the Green County Sheriff’s Department, witnesses saw Trone’s single-occupant plane bank and nosedive about 5 p.m. into a farm field near the airport strip.
An autopsy Tuesday determined Trone died of “multiple trauma,” the Green County Coroner’s office said. A Federal Aviation Administration investigation could take up to 60 days.
Trone, a U.S. Naval Academy graduate and Navy veteran, ran Illinois River tours out of Peoria and Henry, Ill., on big boats beginning in the 1970s,
Trone was an avid collector of antique airplanes and designed both the famed paddlewheeler boat replicas he used on tours of the Illinois River.
One of the boats Trone designed in 1971 and piloted in Illinois is the Julia Belle Swain, now used for Mississippi River tours out of La Crosse.
Trone was an authority on the boats, said Tina Keenan, general manager of the Great River Steamboat Co. in La Crosse. He also served as a consultant on the TV movie “Life on the Mississippi.”
“He was a very personable and knowledgeable man,” she said, “We are getting calls from all over. There is a real fellowship among the riverboat people.”
The plane Trone was flying Monday was a self-built aircraft that Simon Smith, a representative at Brodhead Airport, described as, “an experimental replica of a very old French design” that was called the “Douanier Bathtub.”
Funeral arrangements are pending at the Worthington Funeral Home in Rushville, Ill.
Cameron Connors is a reporter with the Wisconsin State Journal in Madison.
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