Victims en route to varied locations

The 44 victims of United Flight 629 ranged in age from 13-month-old James Fitzpatrick II to 81-year-old Lela McLain.

The infant was the only child on the flight. He was traveling with his mother, Helen, to Japan to visit his Navy father, who barely had a chance to meet his new son before he shipped out, said Andrew J. Field, author of “Mainliner Denver: The Bombing of Flight 629.”

Five children lost both parents in the sabotage.

Off-duty Denver stewardess Sally Scofield, 24, was off to Seattle to finalize wedding plans. Gloria Graham, whose husband, John Gilbert Graham, was sentenced to death for putting explosives on the plane, recognized Scofield at the boarding gate from a Methodist church camp they had attended together.

President Eisenhower’s deputy secretary of public health, Harold Sandstead, 50, was en route to give a speech at Oregon State University. Flight 629 had fallen behind schedule while waiting for Sandstead to arrive on a flight from Washington, D.C.

If the plane had left Denver on schedule, it would have exploded over mountains in Wyoming rather than Weld County farms, making it nearly impossible to determine the cause, the FBI said.

Alma Winsor was on her way to Tacoma, Wash., to help a son-in-law stricken with polio.

Pilot Lee Hall, 38, was about to retire after 14 years and embark on a new career running a sporting-goods store to spend more time with his family.

Passengers Brad Bynum, 32, and his pregnant wife, Carol, 22, were among those who ended up on the plane because a flight engineer’s strike had canceled their original flight. They were on their way home from a first wedding-anniversary celebration.

Samuel Arthur, 38, was a pilot called in as a substitute flight engineer because of the strike.

“I believe Jack has convinced himself that there was no one else on that plane but his mother,” Gloria Graham told The Denver Post in a 1956 interview.