On the morning of May 16, 1965, the Cessna 180, with Gerber at the controls, took off from Lake Wannacutt, some 10 miles south of Oroville in Okanogan County, where they had been on a fishing trip, for a flight over the Cascades to Seattle, where they expected to reach Boeing Field around 2 p.m. Gerber, a business and civic leader, chaired Washington's first equal opportunity commission. Wing Luke was elected to the Seattle City Council in 1962, and became the first Chinese American from a large mainland city to hold such an office. Pilot Robert Nokes spots the wreckage by a waterfall on the mountainside on Thursday afternoon October 3, and the missing plane is positively identified the following day by State Aeronautics Commission officials who lower themselves 500 feet down the mountain with ropes. The Cessna floatplane disappeared in stormy conditions on May 16, 1965, in the Cascade Range as Luke, Gerber, and Ladue were returning to Seattle from Eastern Washington. On October 3, 1968, a helicopter pilot discovers the wreckage of the small airplane in which Seattle City Councilman Wing Luke (1925-1965) perished three years earlier, along with Seattle philanthropist Sidney Gerber and Gerber's assistant Kate Ladue. The crash site is on the side of Merchant Peak east of Index in Snohomish County.

Aircraft missing half wing