Arizona woman traces grandfather’s final journey toward Columbia

An Arizona woman who never met her grandfather visited Columbia Airport in October to retrace the final journey of the former rodeo rider and World War II Navy veteran, who died in a plane crash 52 years ago before reaching Tuolumne County.Lee Sample, 42, of Scottsdale, visited the airport Monday, Oct. 26, on the anniversary of the 1974 crash that killed her grandfather, Al Archie Fletcher, and pilot Doug Simpson as they traveled from Torrance to Columbia.“I am forever connected to Columbia,” Sample told The Union Democrat. “I never knew my grandpa but I’ve always felt deeply connected to him, and I’m curious about him. I made a promise to my mom that someday I would find where her dad passed, and I did.”Fletcher was born in December 1911 in Clinton, Oklahoma, where his family farmed and raised livestock. His father also worked as a drayman, delivering goods by wagon.Fletcher grew up riding horses, working with livestock, and breaking wild horses in the 1910s and 1920s.

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