Captain Texted Wife ‘I Love You’ Before Plane Crashed in Giant Fireball. Now She Shares Her Love and Heartache (Exclusive)

YOU NEED TO KNOW

• More than a month after Capt. Dana Diamond died in a UPS cargo plane crash in Louisville, Ky., his widow recalls their last moments together

• Diamond worked as a pilot for UPS for 37 years and previously served as a marshal and fire chief for his local fire department in Texas.

• He texted his wife minutes before the fatal accident

the night before UPS cargo plane crash As fire and destruction rained down on Louisville, Ky. – 14 dead – Capt. Dana Diamond planted flowers with his wife, Donna, to encourage more butterflies to fly on their 132-acre farm in Caldwell, Texas.

“We did a good job. We built a nice home,” Dana, 62, told his wife before leaving to serve as an international aid worker aboard a McDonnell Douglas MD-11 jet bound for Hawaii on Tuesday, Nov. 4.

“We still have a lot of work to do,” Dana said.

The Diamonds had spent most of October together, making improvements to the property where their home was built just a year and a half ago. On Monday, November 3, they toured the grounds before Donna’s sister Carol arrived.

At the end of Carol’s visit, he stood up to leave and hugged and kissed Dana.

“I’m worried about you on those old planes, Dana,” Donna recalls Carol telling her brother-in-law in an interview with PEOPLE for the first time since her husband’s death. “I hate it when you fly. I’m worried something might happen.”

He quickly reassured Carol, a long-time pilot. According to his wife, Dana said, “I’ll just ride in the back this time.” “I’ll be ‘cook’.”

“I’ll be home before you miss me,” he told them both.

The next afternoon, as UPS Flight 2976 was soaring into the sky at Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport, its left engine and pylon separated from the wing when a fire broke out.

The plane tipped towards the ground and crashed with a huge explosion; Dana, two other crew members on board (Captain Richard Wartenberg, 57, and First Officer Lee Truitt, 45) and 11 people in the area died. PERSON previously reported.

Donna became a widow for the second time in her life.

“I’ve done this before,” says the 63-year-old, whose previous husband, Johnny, died unexpectedly in 2015. (She also shares two children with her first husband, whom she divorced before marrying Johnny.)

“I never thought I could love like I did before, but Dana is that person,” Donna says.

For decades, Dana’s focus was on her career and returning to her hometown of Bastrop, Texas. He joined UPS in 1988 and rose through the ranks alongside fellow pilot Lee Collins.

Dana served as Collins’ deputy in the Independent Pilots Association (IPA) for several years, and together they became known as the union’s “Batman and Robin.”

“You would never want either of us in a meeting, because you might get in over your head,” says Collins, 65, who worked at UPS for 31 years before becoming CEO of the National Flight Training Alliance. “We were a great team”

Dana also served as commissioner and chief of Bastrop County Emergency Services District No. 1 and later trained aircraft rescue firefighters; some of them were first responders who first arrived on the scene in Louisville.

“He was a safety champion,” says Capt. Jess Grigg, who recruited Dana when he was chairman of the IPA’s Aircraft Rescue Firefighting (ARFF) committee. Jack Kreckie, a retired deputy fire chief who oversees ARFF services at Boston Logan International Airport, says the training he received from Dana was “some of the best airplane training most of us have ever received.” In total, Dana has helped train more than 1,000 firefighters in this specialty.

When Dana met Donna in 2015, their world quickly expanded.

“I’m lost and broken, let me tell you,” Donna says. “Then I met Dana and she filled everything in me.”

He dated Dana in 2010; His first and last date with her: They were married within a few months. This October marked their 10th anniversary.

“We were inseparable,” says Donna, describing the happy days of their marriage. Dana quickly became known as “Papaw” to her grandchildren, who are now seven.

“I loved that my dream was his dream,” he adds.

The couple built their dream property together. Dana continued to travel the world for work in between long periods at her home in Caldwell, leaving sweet notes for Donna to find in her absence.

By October, the pilot had spent nearly 25 years flying MD-11s and was the most senior pilot of that fleet type for UPS. In her last conversation with Collins in August, Dana talked about her plans to retire in 2026.

Donna is still grappling with the bitter irony that her husband decided to propose on what was supposed to be a quick trip to Hawaii.

That Tuesday, Dana texted her 8-year-old grandson Hayden, who shared his Christmas list and a sweet note: “I love you Papaw.” Donna also contacted Dana multiple times that day. While he was checking on one of his cows, the length of the day changed. His son, Will, called to ask if he’d heard about a UPS plane crashing in Louisville. Did he know what type of plane Dana was scheduled to take?

Rushing home, Donna found Will waiting for her and, despite his protests, checked the news. Her nightmare was soon confirmed: Dana’s plane had crashed.

“Oh my God, that’s him,” Donna remembers saying. “I fell to the ground and screamed.”

Later that day — as she and her family were recovering from the tsunami of grief and shock — Donna read one of the last messages Dana had sent her moments before the crash: “I love you, wife.”

In the weeks that followed, the local community and people across the country mourned collectively. As the NTSB continues its lengthy investigation, unanswered questions remain.

Collins describes the crash as a “perfect storm of events.”

If the plane had lost its engine, he says, “that plane would have flown just fine.” “But losing one engine, having a fire in the wing where the engine comes out and then…contaminating engine number two and causing the compressor to stall and then come back,” Collins continues. “You really can’t imagine this scenario.”

He adds: “After the second engine returned, there was nothing to save them.”

While he awaits the NTSB report, Collins says he’s concerned about a change in statistics. During his years at UPS, the company had no fatal accidents, but that has changed in the last 15 years, he says.

“There have been three crashes, all fatal, with seven crew members killed and 11 people on the ground,” Collins says, referring to three fatal UPS plane crashes since 2010. USA Today.

Mourning the loss of his friend and former colleague, Collins says the best way to honor Dana is to train pilots with a focus on safety, a priority Dana fought for every day.

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“Dana was a very tough person and captain because he believed in only one way of doing things, and that was the right and safe way,” Collins says. “There were no shortcuts. There were no excuses because we all know our world can have deadly consequences. The goal is to prevent that from happening.”

While she keeps Dana’s memories close to her, sharing Dana’s impact on the aviation community is important to Donna.

“My dear wife, I love you,” Dana had written months earlier in a note left for Donna to find, hoping to ease the pain of her absence. “You are the best part of me.”

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