Many sports figures have died in airplane accidents – golfer Payne Stewart, LSU football coach Bo Rein, Yankees’ catcher Thurman Munson, to name a few.

You’ve heard of the Wichita State plane crash that killed half the Shockers’ football team. You know of the similar tragedy that befell Marshall University.

But so far – knock on wood – no pro football team has ever been involved in an air catastrophe. I imagine there have been some close calls over the years, but perhaps nothing as strange as what happened to the NFL Colts more than three decades ago.

The Colts had played an early December game in Buffalo and were no doubt anxious to bolt for Baltimore – their home then – but the charter flight never arrived because, not too long after taking off from New York’s Kennedy Airport, the Northwest Airlines Boeing 727 crashed in a wooded area up the Hudson River in Harriman State Park.

I know this because a week or so ago I stood where that aircraft plummeted to the ground, killing the three crew members who were ferrying the plane to Buffalo.

Why, you ask, would I traipse through the timber merely to set foot on such an obscure site?

First, a little background music. I was in the area for a family reunion, and my brother Bob, a retired Boeing aerospace engineer, is regarded among the Woodling clan as, well, an airplane crash site freak.

So we were hardly surprised when he stopped at a book store nearby, purchased a park trail map and figured out the approximate site of the crash. It shouldn’t take more than an hour, he assured me, to go in and out. Fine, I replied, agreeing to go with him. Heck, it’ll take only a hour or so. Yeah, right.

I should have known we might be in trouble when we couldn’t find the trailhead right away. Finally, we spotted a small break in the high grass and were soon immersed in tall trees, a blessing as it turned out because we hadn’t brought any sunscreen.

Then again, we didn’t have any water, either. Or food. Or a compass. All we had to do was follow the blue trail markers. Sure enough, we eventually reached the clearing where Bob was sure the plane had spun to earth.

But it had taken us an hour and a half to reach the spot, so we decided to take what appeared to be a shorter way out. Perhaps it was indeed a shortcut, but the trail markers disappeared on us, we took the wrong path and an interminable three hours after entering the woods we finally emerged.

We weren’t lost. We knew where we were, thanks to the map. It’s just that we were at least a couple of miles from where we had parked the car. Decision time. Should we walk another hour to the car or should we humbly call for help?

Hah. Humility in the pursuit of comfort is hardly a sin.

Thus I would like to take this opportunity to thank the folks who placed the cell phone tower in Harriman State Park, and especially my daughter who drove to our rescue and, in the tradition of Gunga Din, brought two bottles of delicious water with her.

Sure, we took plenty of good-natured ribbing when we returned from our adventure, but at least Bob and I had the satisfaction of knowing we had accomplished something nobody else in the world had the slightest interest in doing.