Among the dead in the chartered Boeing 707 was 26-year-old David Cogland of Atlanta; the youngest artist of the group.

Among the dead in the chartered Boeing 707 was 26-year-old David Cogland of Atlanta; the youngest artist of the group.

This week marked the 62nd anniversary of a tragedy altering the trajectory of modern Atlanta.

On June 3, 1962, Atlanta’s civic and cultural leaders were returning from a museum tour of Europe sponsored by the Atlanta Art Association when their chartered Boeing 707 crashed upon takeoff at Orly Field near Paris, France.

122 passengers died.106 were Atlantans affiliated with the arts and civic communities.

It was then the worst disaster in aviation history.

Among the dead, 26-year-old David Cogland of Atlanta, the youngest artist of the group.

Cogland was an abstract painter who found himself moved to share his passion through art therapy.

He was known to travel by bus to Central State Hospital in Milledgeville, Ga. to give art instruction to patients - all without asking for compensation.

Cogland worked with those in the mental hospital as well as those in the prison section of the facility in an attempt to bring joy and freedom of expression.

Dr. Timothy Harris Thomas, a pediatric surgeon and Georgia Tech alum, reached out.

“My father was given a painting by the mother of David Cogland...It has been a meaningful piece to our family for over 50 yea

“My father was given a painting by the mother of David Cogland...It has been a meaningful piece to our family for over 50 years and remains so today."

“My father was given a painting by the mother of David Cogland," Thomas recalls. "Several years after the crash, my father [a Methodist pastor] had been asked to visit David’s mother.  After the visit, my dad commented that he liked her son’s art. She told my father to go into another room of the house and pick out any painting he liked. My father chose this one, and she gave it to him on the spot. It has been a meaningful piece to our family for over 50 years and remains so today."

Cogland’s niece, Debbie Cogland Trapp, lives in Douglasville. “I was 10 years old in 1962. My uncle was also a window designer for some of the stores in downtown Atlanta, including Davison’s [which would become Macy's].”

Cogland was a young man of Atlanta artistic influence with gallery showings. He was rising, on his way, involved in many local projects of his hometown.

“There is a brochure from the Atlanta Civic Ballet's 33rd season where he is listed as a set designer,” offered Trapp; “and from the Atlanta Arts Festival May 1961, a brochure [list him] as an exhibitor.”

Cogland's Atlanta future was growing exponentially and the invitation to accompany the local leaders to Europe was an endorsement of his talent and possibilities. The crash ended the Cogland dreams.

Still, today the 26-year-old who died in Paris and is buried in Decatur at Resthaven Cemetery, is remembered and honored for his goodness and talent.

“I don’t think about it every day anymore, but it is there,"  said 81-year-old Pat Reynolds of Atlanta, her voice pausing. "They’ve been gone a mighty long time.

“When I saw our pastor walk in to the house, I knew it.”

She was a teenage newlywed living with her teen husband Charles In the basement of her in-laws Atlanta home that Sunday morning.

“Had we not been married, I don’t know what would have happened.”

Reynolds' parents, Charlotte and Tom Little Sr., were killed in the crash.

“We immediately made our way over to my parents' home address [behind the current location of The Church of the Apostles], where my 12-year-old brother [Tom Jr.] was being looked after by my father’s elderly sister.”

The teenage couple wanted to break the devastating news before the young boy heard from another source.

“When we pulled up to the house, crowds had already gathered on the driveway," Reynolds recalled with vivid clarity. "Everyone had heard the news."

Tom Jr. was watching cartoons in his parents' bedroom when the phone rang.

He answered the same time his aunt picked up the extension in the kitchen and listened as another relative was crying, saying between tears that the Air France plane had crashed.

Tom Little Sr. was one of Atlanta’s best-known architects. He restored 18th-century buildings; and his wife, Charlotte, decorated the interiors with period furnishings.

Weeks before, Reynolds had joyfully taken her parents to Atlanta Municipal Airport for their month-long trip to Europe.

“It was May 9th when they departed, and we took a picture at the gate, putting a coin in the photography machine. They squeezed in smiling, laughing. It was the last picture I have of them together.”

The photo sits framed in both homes of the Little’s children.

Tom Jr. has said he and his older sister rarely spoke of the crash.

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“We never talked about it," Reynolds affirmed. "Children kept comments to themselves as not to upset the adults. And adults kept comments inward as not to upset the children."

“You shove it down and moved forward. I put on my big girl pants and did my job.”

Her job as a teenage wife was to now take care of little brother, Tom Jr. He moved in with the couple at her in-laws' home.

“We, as young people, had never been to a funeral. But we began preparing for my parents service and burial.”

It took weeks for the FBI to match up the deceased with names. Without sophisticated technology, the forensics were painstakingly laborious.

The grief played out in slow motion.

Finally, the remains were released to the families in Atlanta.

“The day of the funeral at Westview Cemetery, there were services everywhere, it was as though one large party was going on,” Reynolds said again pausing. “The place was alive with people wherever you looked in all directions.”

Atlanta was smaller in 1962. The dead were connected to what seemed like everyone.

“The list of victims, not unlike 9/11, were plastered everywhere you went and wherever looked, you knew who was grieving, it was an incredible time,” Reynolds continued.

The issues for her family were far from over after the burial. A protracted guardianship legal battle would play out between the family of her late father and the family of her husband.

(“They gave us fits," Reynolds says.)

The Reynolds won.

Pat and Charles Reynolds have now been married 63 years. A remarkable teenage marriage of longevity with Atlanta history in tow.

The couple raised Tom Jr. successfully.

“He was a delight, a fabulous brother, an easy kid.”

“I don’t think about it every day anymore, but it is there," said Pat Reynolds of Atlanta, pictured here with her mother Cha

“I don’t think about it every day anymore, but it is there," said Pat Reynolds of Atlanta, pictured here with her mother Charlotte.

Pat Reynolds was a teacher in Atlanta Christian education 50 years, Charles has been in the pipeline business.

“The aftermath of the Paris crash was the most painful time of my life," Reynolds says.

A lifetime later, a life of triumph rising from unspeakable tragedy.

“I am a woman of faith, I was a rebellious kid, ran off and got married in 1961 to a much older man of 17,” Reynolds offers with a laugh. “But I see God’s hand in all this, and the lives of my remarkable in-laws. It’s been a great life.”

This horrific aviation crash has always been civically framed as a catalyst for the arts in Atlanta.

The Woodruff Arts Center and Center Stage Theatre were created in memory of those who died.

And the Rodin gift from the French government, too.