The former mayor of a small town in Alaska, who was an experienced pilot, was among those killed when the small plane he was piloting crashed in shallow waters near a remote Alaskan town. Alaska Department of Public Safety on Thursday identified the pilot as Eric Middlebrook, 68, of Anchorage. It identified the passengers as Ronald Schmidt, 65, Lance Schmidt, 20, and Daniel Simons, 82, and said in its statement that all three were from California.The Piper PA-24 was bound Wednesday for the airport in the small town of Seldovia after taking off from Anchorage when it crashed. Seldovia’s airport is about 135 miles (220 kilometers) southwest of Anchorage.Middlebrook, who had a commercial refrigerator business, served on the city council and was mayor of Bethel, a town of 6,000 people in western Alaska that sits on the banks of the Kuskokwim River, said Mark Springer, a member of the Bethel City Council, who knew him.
Springer said Middlebrook had moved to Anchorage in the last couple of years after living in Bethel since the 1980s, but he continued to visit the town.He said Middlebrook had been flying his plane for decades to the villages that dot the Kuskokwim River Delta to fix coolers and refrigerators.“He was a fixture in the community and he was a respected guy. He was known all over the YK (Yukon–Kuskokwim) Delta. It’s a tragic loss,” Springer said.
