Pilot Died Doing What He Loved

APPLE VALLEY - On the afternoon of Mother's Day, May 13, Dan H. Morgan III was seeding rice from an agricultural plane in Colusa when the tail of the aircraft clipped nearby power lines.

The tail broke off and the plane plummeted to the ground where it burst into flames. The 50-year-old pilot died in the burning plane.

If there is any solace for family and friends in losing Morgan so young, it is that he was doing what he loved when he died.

"You took his feet off the ground and he was one happy camper," said his longtime friend Mike Morris of Apple Valley.

The Apple Valley jack-of-all-trades, including crop duster, was born April 18, 1957, in Loma Linda to Blanquita Morgan Saylor and Daniel H. Morgan Jr.

The family lived in San Bernardino, and Morgan Jr. worked in electronics at Norton Air Force Base, while Blanquita was employed at San Bernardino County Medical Center.

It was a neighbor who turned Morgan on to flying at the age of 4, and before long he was building model airplanes and operating radio-controlled airplanes.

From a young age, he was a standout athlete in gymnastics, swimming, track, football and wrestling.

He was the youngest Eagle Scout in the nation at age 14 and won a scholarship to be a foreign exchange student in Ecuador while he was in high school.

After graduating from Aquinas High School, he raced motorcycles and jalopies and for a time studied mechanical engineering at Cal Poly Pomona.

He taught himself how to customize the fiberglass on Corvettes and left school to open a Corvette repair shop in San Bernardino.

Morgan was so good at what he did that he eventually earned the nickname of "Corvette Dan," said Morris, who met Morgan when he took his Corvette in to get fixed.

"He was probably, mechanically, the best I have ever seen," he said. "And his job exposed him to some prominent people from doctors to judges."

After residing in San Bernardino, he lived in Lucerne Valley for a time but left because he felt there was too much theft there.

"He used to say every time he came home in Lucerne Valley that something was missing," said Morris.

In 1985, he moved to Apple Valley and opened another Corvette repair shop and two other businesses, Apple Valley Paint and D and D Fabrication.

During his time in Apple Valley, he was the Bonneville time trials record holder, reaching a speed of more than 170 mph at El Mirage.

Living and working near the Apple Valley Airport, he took his love of flying to the next level.

He took lessons, earned his pilot's license and ended up building his first airplane.

He went on to own two planes - a Cessna 150 and Cessna 152 - and a Hiller helicopter.

About eight years ago, he went to Georgia to participate in crop dusting training. When he came back, he took seasonal crop dusting jobs all over California and in Canada.

Although he would be gone for weeks at a time, he still found time for other projects, including building a limo copter, an unusual vehicle made from a bus chassis and a Vietnam War helicopter.

The Discovery Channel filmed him putting the vehicle together then driving it to the huge annual Harley-Davidson event in Sturgess, S.D. The vehicle had 26 seats, a Jacuzzi and held three motorcycles.

Taking on such huge projects came easily to her son, said his mother, Blanquita Morgan Saylor of San Marcos.

"He was an inventor who would make a part if he couldn't find it and a perfectionist who would paint a motorcycle tank 14 times just to get it right," she said.

Morgan Saylor knew her son's creativity and love of challenges might some day put him in harm's way, but she accepted his lifestyle.

"He knew the dangers, especially of crop dusting," she said. "But he found solitude and felt free when he was flying a plane.

"He always said it was safer than driving on a freeway."

Morgan is also survived by his father, Daniel H. Morgan Jr. of San Bernardino; a daughter , Laura Beachtel of Tempe, Ariz.; sister Rama M. Inza of Morgan Hill; and Aunt Maria Elena Stoll of Miami, Fla.

Memorial services will be held at 11 a.m. Saturday at Sunset Hills Memorial Park, 24000 Waalew Road in Apple Valley.

In lieu of flowers, donations should be sent to the American Cancer Society.

from an earlier relationship Contact writer Debbie Pfeiffer Trunnell at (909) 386-3879 or via e-mail at deborah.

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