How We Got Here
On October 20, 1977, a chartered plane carrying Lynyrd Skynyrd and their touring crew crashed near Gillsburg, Mississippi after running out of fuel. Six people were killed — among them lead vocalist Ronnie Van Zant, guitarist Steve Gaines, vocalist Cassie Gaines, and assistant road manager Dean Kilpatrick. Twenty others survived.
In the aftermath, the band's name became legend. But the twenty people who crawled out of that wreckage — battered, grieving, and in many cases seriously injured — were largely left to manage on their own. The crew members who had devoted their careers to making those tours happen received little recognition and, in many cases, no meaningful support from the management entities that continued to profit from the band's legacy.
Nearly five decades later, those survivors are in their 60s and 70s, still living with the lasting effects of that night. The Freebird Survivors Foundation Inc. was built in response to their unmet needs — and to ensure that when the next crash happens, survivors aren't left with the same silence.
Memorial stone at the crash site near Gillsburg, Mississippi.