Death
On 20 November 1987, two days after receiving his Queen's Gallantry Medal, Button was piloting Bell JetRanger ZK-HKF on a flight with local photographer Ronald Woolf and property developer Dion Savage. Police called in the helicopter to assist tracking Peter Carr, an offender who had escaped from Rimutaka Prison. During the search Button's helicopter drifted into high voltage transmission lines, lost both rotor blades, and crashed in Churton Park killing all three on board. Ironically Button had been the helicopter pilot who assisted when the lines were first built.
At his funeral on the 25th, thirteen helicopters paid tribute with a flyby. A few years after his death a street in Johnsonville, Peter Button Place, was named in his honour.
Read more about this topic: Peter Button
Famous quotes containing the word death:
“Fatigue dulls the pain, but awakes enticing thoughts of death. So! that is the way in which you are tempted to overcome your loneliness—by making the ultimate escape from life..—No! It may be that death is to be your ultimate gift to life: it must not be an act of treachery against it.”
—Dag Hammarskjöld (1905–1961)
“It was not death he feared—it was the disgrace of death, and the misery of the ignominious preparations. He knew in his heart that heaven could not call it murder that he had done; but he felt equally sure that man would do so.”
—Anthony Trollope (1815–1882)
“And yet the sun pardons our voices still,
And berries in the hedge
Through all the nights of rain have come to the full,
And death seems like long hills, a range
We ride each day towards, and never reach.”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)