A family left town for a youth baseball tournament. Then tragedy struck
CNN
Five members of a suburban Atlanta family traveled in late June to watch 12-year-old James Ryan Van Epps compete in a baseball tournament in Cooperstown, New York. On their way back home, something went terribly wrong.
A few days after the plane crash, Ansley Van Epps visited the house where her brother and his family once lived. There was food in the refrigerator, dishes in the sink. She walked through her nephews’ rooms and looked at their medals, their sports jerseys, their school uniforms. Elsewhere she found items laid out for a beach vacation the family would never take. “It was heartbreaking,” she said. Her brother, Ryan Van Epps, had gone to upstate New York for a youth baseball tournament with his wife, Laura, and their two sons, Harrison, 10; and James Ryan, 12. They were returning June 30 in a small plane piloted by the boys’ grandfather, Roger Beggs. The plane crashed in the Catskill Mountains, not long after takeoff, for unknown reasons that may have been related to bad weather. All five people were killed. The Van Epps family left behind two dogs, a stunned and grieving community, and an untold number of priceless memories. Regan Burr was a friend of the family. She remembered Laura’s flower arrangements. They often featured blue hydrangeas and magnolia leaves. Laura brought flowers in a vase to Burr’s house for a cookout on Memorial Day weekend. Burr washed the vase and stored it away. When she heard about the plane crash, she found the vase, cut some hydrangeas from her own yard, put them in the vase, and brought it back to Laura’s house. No one was home to receive them, so she left the vase on the front porch.
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