An award-winning Aspen architect, who found comfort in his faith as he battled cancer, and a longtime pilot, who got his first taste of flying in Canada, died from multiple trauma in a Montrose plane crash, a county coroner confirmed Wednesday.
David F. Gibson, the 61-year-old owner of Gibson Architects LLC, and Larry Smalley, a recently retired pilot who once flew for Coleman, an outdoor-camping company, also suffered severe burns as the single-engine plane crashed into a downtown Montrose neighborhood Monday.
“They both died within seconds of impact,” Montrose County Coroner Mark Young determined after an autopsy Wednesday. “The manner of death is an accident.”
Young said Gibson had recently purchased the plane and needed 15 hours of training for insurance purposes.
The men had been doing training maneuvers at Montrose Regional Airport. It is not clear who was piloting the plane, Arnold Scott, an investigator with the National Transportation Safety Board, said Tuesday.
The plane, a Beechcraft A36TC, single turbo-charged piston-engine airplane, was “almost completely destroyed by the post-impact fire,” Young said.
Brian Taylor, owner of Heartland Airplanes LLC in Kansas, said he had only recently sold the plane to Gibson.
“I flew that airplane myself. That’s the reason I can say there were no apparent problems,” Taylor said.
Meanwhile, friends and family remembered the men fondly.
Sally Smalley said she and her husband would have been married 40 years this month. Larry Smalley learned to fly when he joined the Aero Club, a sports aviation club in Canada, while he was in the U.S. Air Force and stationed in Newfoundland, she said.
Smalley, who retired as a pilot in December, “loved to be in the air, and he loved for other people to love it,” she said.
In Aspen, Gibson was remembered as a modest man and creative architect.
Steve Woodrow, pastor of the Crossroads Church of Aspen, where Gibson was a member for at least 20 years, said Gibson was a former church deacon and active in Bible studies, and he used his architectural skills to benefit the church.
“He did a lot of the physical work in the church,” said Woodrow. He added that Gibson’s faith brought him through difficult times.
“He wrestled with cancer years ago,” Woodrow said. “His faith is what he rested on with that whole process.”
August Reno, owner of Reno Smith Architects in Aspen, was Gibson’s partner from 1981 to 1999, when they operated Gibson and Reno Architects in Aspen and Telluride.
He said Gibson took up flying when they opened an office in Telluride so that he could commute quickly between the two towns.
Among architects, Reno said, Gibson “was highly regarded.”
“He was kind of quiet, not looking for a lot of recognition, very spiritual,” Reno said. He said he last saw Gibson at a benefit. “He was telling me he was in the process of buying this new plane and he was looking forward to it,” he said.
He had taken a break from flying during his bout with cancer, Reno said.
Staff writer Jeffrey Leib contributed to this report.
Staff writer Karen Rouse can be reached at 303-820-1684 or krouse@denverpost.com.
