Air accidents, pilots and a city park

Carl Lobe Park, in Bellingham, is a tiny park in the Columbia-Eldridge neighborhood --children's play equipment and a small ball field. This park has been around as long as I can remember, but most people have no clue who it was named after. Who was Carl Lobe? Information is scarce. When I was young there was a big furniture store in town. It was called BB Furniture. Years later that was changed to Van's BB Furniture. The tall building is still in town, on Bay Street. Veco Engineering has occupied it for years. The Lobe family owned this business. They had a home at the corner of Victor and Illinois. Carl was the dad, but the park was named after a son, who died young. Carl Jr, who was well liked and was nicknamed Buddy, was a pilot . He died performing at an airshow. He lived from 1921 till 1944 and there is a little plaque in the park stating it was dedicated to this man. I tracked down the whole story with my "old timers" network.I personally remember another air accident of this nature, and had met the man who died. My wife flew with him when she was a student at Western. One of the top stunt pilots in the world was this Western Washington State College professor named Dave Rahm -- "the flying professor". He was famous for his aerobatics and so impressed King Hussein that the King recruited Dave to teach stunt flying to the Royal Jordanian stunt team. While in Jordan, performing a maneuver, Rahm crashed into the ground. The royal family and Rahm's wife and son were watching. Hussein rushed to the plane to try to pull the pilot out, but it was too late. This happened in the mid to late 1970's as I recall. Walter Cronkite lead the evening news with the footage. I saw Rahm perform once, and his maneuver called "headache" was startling as the plane stalled and spun towards earth seemingly out of control. I guess, ultimately, it was. On page 12, of the PDF ink below, is an article and photo of Rahm. There are also a couple photos from Carl Lobe Park.

http://www.flyvfc.com/database/Patrician_November_2005.pdf

Thanks for looking.

Steven L. Smith

Bellingham home inspector

www.kingofthehouse.com