The terrain looked like I expected it would. There are gently rolling hills with a mix of tall, skinny pine trees and sturdy hardwoods, and there are cow pastures and a few farmhouses nearby. Though I've covered thousands of miles throughout Mississippi in my life, I had never been to the site of Lynyrd Skynyrd's horrific plane crash until last month. 

I still haven't seen the actual spot where the plane hit the ground, which was going on a half-century ago, but I visited the memorial that's close to it. I found it to be a tasteful tribute to a monumental rock band.

I wasn't the biggest Lynyrd Skynyrd fan, but I always thought they were a great band, and so did most of my friends. We grew up in an era where Southern rock was emerging powerfully as a dominant force in music. This tight-sounding group from Florida had a confident swagger and seemed to bring rock, country, and blues together for a fresh, exciting sound. Musically, it was something special.

The crash happened Oct. 20, 1977, and for some of us, it hit close to home. The news reports said the site of the tragedy was outside McComb and not far from the Louisiana line. Later, I learned that it was more specifically in the Magnolia community, which is just outside the tiny town of Gillsburg. Looking at the location now on Google Maps, I see that it was almost exactly 100 miles from where I was sitting, in my hometown of Jackson, Mississippi, when the news came in.

This is my memory: One of the local TV stations (I believe it was WAPT) broke into regular programming with a news bulletin, which was rare in those days. I was confused when the clean-cut newscaster mangled the name of the band as something like “Lin-aird Skin-aird”, which I look back on as ironic because their iconic first album ("Pronounced 'Lĕh-'nérd 'Skin-'nérd") had phonetic pronunciation symbols as part of its name. 

Soon we found out who was killed and who wasn't, and it was a big blow to hear that lead singer and band leader Ronnie Van Zant had perished. The others that died were relatively new guitarist Steve Gaines and his sister, Cassie Gaines, who was a backup singer. The plane crash also claimed the lives of pilot Walter McCreary and co-pilot William Gray, as well as the band's assistant road manager, Dean Kilpatrick. Most of the others in the band crew were seriously injured, but reading up on the details of the crash, it seems amazing that 20 of the 26 people on board survived. One reason is that there was no fire when the plane hit the ground because it had run out of fuel.

They had boarded the 30-year-old twin-engine Convair CV-300 in Greenville, South Carolina, where they had performed the previous night, and were bound for Baton Rouge. After the engines failed, the pilot first wanted to make an emergency landing in nearby McComb but, out of desperation, guided the aircraft from 4,500 feet toward an open field he spotted. Instead, the descending plane fell short, crashed into a stand of trees, and broke into several pieces.

I recall that the news of the crash was a big topic of conversation at school over the following days. The group's latest album had just come out, and word spread quickly about the weird coincidence that guitarist Gaines seemed to be consumed by flames on the cover. As a result, the record company recalled the original pressing of "Street Survivors" and replaced it with a less controversial version. 

Lynyrd Skynyrd had a rough and rowdy image back in the day, but today it is somewhat surprising to me that all these years later, there's a public memorial where people can gather to pay their respects. It's there because of a nonprofit foundation headed up by the landowner, Dwain Easley. He was just 26 years old when the crash happened near his home and was among the first people to reach the site and help get the injured people out of the remote area and into area hospitals.

Dedicated in 2019 on the anniversary of the crash, the memorial is on a side road off Highway 568 and just a few minutes from busy Interstate 55. Several hundred yards from the actual crash site, which is in a more heavily wooded area, there are black granite markers and other amenities on a small rise with six concrete steps leading to them.

I was driving from Biloxi to Natchez recently and decided to check it out. On the day of my visit, it was somewhat overcast with a chill in the air, and there weren't many others there. One of them, a nice fellow named Eric, had stopped by on his way back home to Bowling Green, Kentucky. His young daughter was with him, and she seemed as curious as he was about the polished stone markers that honored Lynyrd Skynyrd and told their history. 

"My father was 4 when the crash happened," Eric offered. "I had seen something about the crash site on YouTube, and I looked up the memorial on GPS. I saw that it was just 10 minutes out of our way, so I figured it was worth a stop."

It was indeed.

Eric saw the farmhouses along the rural route and found himself wondering which ones were, and weren't, there on that fateful night in 1977. He said the tunnel of trees he drove under toward the memorial site was kind of spooky, and I knew what he meant. I also had felt some uneasiness and an almost solemn feeling as I made my way to this little part of Mississippi that had been unfamiliar to me but, sadly, was known around the world.