The Jefferson High School freshman drama class staged a production of the play “The Big Sandy” last Thursday and Friday nights. The unique character study was written by JHS Drama teacher Mike Hesford, who smiled about some of the real drama the students went through to perform his work.
“We first saw the script on about January 10,” Hesford recalls. “So we’ve been going at it pretty hard since then.” The production looked on track until just a few days before the curtain rose. Then, a winter storm impacted rehearsals, there were performance scheduling conflicts that had to be worked out, and two of the stars were out of school all week with illnesses and had to be replaced with just days to spare. JHS junior Mikael Richard, who filled in as the character “Bode”, was asked when he first saw the script. “Tuesday,” he answered.
“The Big Sandy” began in 2018 when Hesford was looking for ideas for simple one-act plays for his students. He says he’s not much of a history buff, but came across a story in an online list of ‘unusual events’. One of those events described a plane crash in a Montana farm field that occurred over 50 years ago. On February 2, 1970, a U.S. Air Force F-106 Delta Dart jet left Malmstrom Air Force Base near Great Falls. During the training flight, the plane went into a spin the pilot could not recover from, and crashed into a field. The pilot, Captain Gary Foust, despite the critical situation, managed to eject from the plane and survived the crash. The F-106, a supersonic interceptor aircraft, stabilized after the ejection, then glided downward, unpiloted, into a corn field near Big Sandy. A local sheriff investigated the scene, where the plane’s engine was still running as it idled in the field. The sheriff was instructed by Air Force officials to “just let it run until the fuel runs out”. The Air Force later reclaimed the jet, making repairs and returning it to service.
