Before making one of the most important walks of her life, Elizabeth Wilson Winterbone wanted to make sure she was physically up to the challenge.
Toned up and trimmed down, she’s ready now.
Winterbone is the daughter of Ben and Helen Wilson, who died in the Oct. 2, 1970 crash of a plane carrying Wichita State University football players, staff and supporters. Ben Wilson was the team’s head coach.
Next month, Winterbone plans to visit the crash site on a Colorado mountainside.
“It’s always been a goal of mine to hike up to the crash site in Colorado,” Winterbone said. “For a lot of reasons, that wasn’t possible. Not just physical.”
“It’s an enormous spot in my life,” she added.
Elizabeth Wilson Winterbone is shown as a child with her parents, Helen and Ben Wilson, and brother, John.
Winterbone was 10 years old and preparing to spend the night at a friend’s house on the day of the crash. Her father had been hired from the University of Virginia to help turn around WSU’s football program the previous year. The crash was blamed on the pilot allowing the overloaded plane to become trapped in a box canyon.
Winterbone submerged her feelings about her parents’ deaths for a long time. After the crash, she was first sent to live with distant relatives on the East Coast, then with an aunt and uncle in California. She married and lived overseas for a time.
Wherever she was, few people knew about the loss she’d experienced.
Then in 2005, a friend convinced her to move back to Wichita, where the crash is commemorated each Oct. 2 at WSU’s memorial to victims and survivors, prominently located at the campus’ Hillside entrance.
“I reconnected with a whole bunch of people I had lost contact with,” she said. “Moving back here offered a layer of feeling that was pretty special — the fact that Wichita State has continued to remember the people that are affected by that.”
She usually attends the annual memorial and has gotten to know some of the other people who lost family members in the crash, in particular the children of state Rep. Raymond King and his wife, Yvonne, who were survived by six daughters and one son.
She knew that many Wichitans had made the trek to the crash site, where wreckage from the plane is still scattered. But the closest she got was a bronze marker that sits along Interstate 70 near the beginning of the trail to the site. “I have stopped and visited that in the past.”
Winterbone has kept busy since returning to Wichita, teaching at WSU, painting watercolors and participating in the Daughters of the American Revolution organization. It was actually a health scare that first sent her back to the gym. She joined the Greater Wichita YMCA 18 months ago after a hospital stay for high blood pressure, a condition she didn’t realize she had. “When I got out, I knew that losing weight would definitely help with that.”
Rather than “going all gung-ho” and risk injury or burn out, she started slowly, with a water exercise class designed for people with arthritis. “I thought, this is definitely doable.” She soon switched to a more challenging class called Waterworks and immediately started feeling better. “It just kind of reminded me of that freedom of being a kid in the water. The movement, I think, was really beneficial. But meanwhile you feel very safe and supported.”
However, the pounds didn’t start coming off until her doctor put her on one of the newer GLP-1 weight-loss drugs. She’s lost 80 pounds over the past 15 months.
“The medications don’t work by themselves,” she said. “You have to make changes in many parts of your life — exercising and eating carefully and listening to your body are all part of the success of that.”
About six months ago, Winterbone amped up her workouts again, after her son, Philip, said he wanted to visit the site where the grandparents he never knew died. In addition to water exercise, she started attending a HITT (high intensity interval training) class, lifting weights and walking on a treadmill.
“I’m feeling much stronger, much more energy,” she said.
She thinks she’ll need it. She’s been told the hike is about 1.5 miles each way and “quite arduous.”
“The first part of it is an easy pathway — all incline — then my understanding is a good half of it goes up to very steep and rocky and climbing over trees. And, of course, it’s high altitude to reach the site itself.”
Winterbone said she’s always been affected by higher altitudes. To further prepare, she, her son and a friend have rented an Airbnb for a week to get acclimated before the trek. She’ll probably take along some canned oxygen that a friend recently recommended.
She has “no idea” how long the climb will take and says she’s “allowing myself plenty of flexibility.”
“People have been really wonderful and offered to go with us,” she said. “Honestly, I prefer it just to be my close little group. I want to feel free to sit there all day if I want to.”
What does she expect to find?
“It’s a complex place where an unimaginable tragedy that completely changed the trajectory of my life happened,” she said. “You can look at the latest videos (of the site) and see the amount of wreckage, melted pieces of airplane all over the debris field. There are places that are still black where nothing will grow. There’s a scar on the land that I just feel like I want to experience for myself. I want to feel the energy of that place for myself.”
