It was a routine approach at about 6:30 p.m. on Nov. 7 when pilot Arnold Emery dipped his twin-engine Beechcraft Duchess toward a private landing strip near the base of Glassy Mountain in northern Greenville County.
Emery and his passenger, Scott Lewellen (who is Emery’s pastor at Mount Pleasant Baptist Church, Travelers Rest) were returning from Fort Wayne, Ind., where Lewellen had sung at a funeral.
An upstate pastor and a member of his church survived with minor injuries after their plane crashed in a wooded area in northern Greenville County on Nov. 7.The landing strip was well lit, and everything looked normal as Emery maneuvered the plane to within a quarter-mile of touchdown on the undulating runway. He had made hundreds of landings in his 38 years as a private pilot.
Suddenly, Lewellen spoke: “Arnold, we’re going to hit the trees.” Before Lewellen could finish his sentence, the plane had clipped a treetop in the darkness and begun to roll.
“The sound was worse than the feel … a horrendous crashing sound,” Lewellen said later.
At more than 90 miles per hour, the Beechcraft tore through a canopy of hardwoods and pines and crashed to the ground, finally coming to rest, inverted, its tail pitched upward at a steep angle.
Bloodied and shaken, but alive, the two men clambered out of the wreckage.
“We grabbed each other and prayed and thanked the Lord,” said Lewellen. “Then we walked out of the woods to Arnold’s house and called EMS.”
Lewellen suffered a cut to the back of his head and received a couple of stitches in one finger. Emery walked away with a few scratches and some soreness.
Both men were healthy enough to be in church two nights later for midweek prayer service at Mount Pleasant – a full house, Lewellen noted. “It was an awesome time,” he said.
The duo’s miraculous escape from death and serious injury was “kinda the talk of the church” at the midweek service, Emery said.
Lewellen believes that God spared their lives for a purpose. “There’s no reason we should have gotten out except that God’s got more for us to do,” said Lewellen. “I’m excited to see what he’s got for me.”
Emery said he didn’t have time to think about anything or to pray during the frantic moments of the crash, “but I think we were both prayed up before that happened.”
“The Lord has a reason for all that’s done,” he said. “We don’t know that reason, but he looked after us well.”