Death
On October 20, 1977, three days after the album, "Street Survivors" was released (and five dates into the band's most successful tour yet), a plane carrying the band between shows from Greenville, South Carolina to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, crashed outside of Gillsburg, Mississippi. The plane landed in a swampy area and crashed into trees. Gaines died from blunt-force trauma to the head; he was 28 years old and likely was killed on impact. The crash also killed Ronnie Van Zant, Steve's sister Cassie Gaines, assistant road manager Dean Kilpatrick, pilot Walter McCreary, and co-pilot William Gray.
Steve Gaines was cremated and buried in Orange Park, Florida in 1977, but was relocated to an undisclosed location after vandals broke into his and bandmate Ronnie Van Zant's tombs on June 29, 2000. Their mausoleums remain as memorials for fans to visit.
He is the subject of the 2001 song "Cassie's Brother" by rock band Drive-By Truckers.
Less than two years after the plane crash, the Gaines' mother, Cassie LaRue Gaines, was killed in an automobile accident near the cemetery where Steve and Cassie were buried. She was buried near her children.
Read more about this topic: Steve Gaines
Famous quotes containing the word death:
“For since death came through a human being, the resurrection of the dead has also come through a human being; for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ.”
—Bible: New Testament, 1 Corinthians 15:21-22.
“From the very nature of progress, all ages must be transitional. If they were not, the world would be at a stand-still and death would speedily ensue. It is one of the tamest of platitudes but it is always introduced by a flourish of trumpets.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“I admit that the generation which produced Stalin, Auschwitz and Hiroshima will take some beating; but the radical and universal consciousness of the death of God is still ahead of us; perhaps we shall have to colonize the stars before it is finally borne in upon us that God is not out there.”
—R.J. Hollingdale (b. 1930)