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:
“And death i think is no parenthesis”
—E.E. (Edward Estlin)
“In every unbeliever’s heart there is an uneasy feeling that, after all, he may awake after death and find himself immortal. This is his punishment for his unbelief. This is the agnostic’s Hell.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)
“Life springs from death and from the graves of patriot men and women spring living nations.... They think that they have pacified Ireland. They think that they have purchased half of us and intimidated the other half. They think that they have foreseen everything, think they have provided against everything; but the fools, the fools, the fools, they have left us our Fenian dead, and while Ireland holds these graves Ireland unfree shall never be at peace.”
—Patrick Henry Pearse (1879–1916)