Lost but not forgotten: Beaver Island plane crash victims' legacy lives on
BEAVER ISLAND — On Saturday, Nov. 13, 2021, husband and wife Adam Kendall and Kate Leese Kendall lost their lives in a commercial plane crash on Beaver Island.
It was a flight they had taken dozens of times since moving to the remote island 30 miles northwest of Charlevoix to start a vineyard on an old farm five miles from the lone town of Saint James, according to family members. The vineyard was a final stop for the couple who had embarked six years earlier on a wandering lifestyle in a refurbished airstream in search of new horizons, as reported in their obituary.
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Adam and Kate were two of four people who died in the plane crash. The pilot, William Julian, and real estate agent Mike Perdue of Gaylord also perished. The only survivor was Perdue’s 11-year-old daughter, saved by the shield her father’s body provided as he embraced her during impact.
The couple’s two dogs, Frank the Basset hound and Baker the Bernese mountain dog, also died that day.
In the sixth months since the accident, the Federal Aviation Administration has yet to identify the cause of the accident, as the families of the victims continue to try to make sense of what happened.
Adam and Kate were returning to Beaver Island to tend to their new vineyard — 2,100 grape roots they had recently planted “into the fine limestone soil of Beaver Island.”
Kate’s mother, Chris Leese, remembers the last conversation she had with her daughter on the phone as she was getting on the airplane.
“Kate was telling me how she and Adam had to remove the plastic covering the vines,” Chris recalled.
Soon after the accident, when Chris and her husband and Kate’s father, Alan, were able to get to the island (via ferry boat), she became consumed with the idea that the plastic had to be removed from the vines in Kate and Adam’s vineyard. It was the last thing her daughter had said to her and something inside her had to finish this task.
In a show of community support, more than 50 volunteers from across the island met the Leese and Kendall families at the vineyard that day. They all took the plastic off the plants.
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To this day, Beaver Island volunteers, family and friends are working to keep the couple’s vineyard going.
“Our biggest help is from Sid Burgess, he's been everything to us in monitoring, fixing, fencing, mowing, organizing men and projects ... everything,” said Chris.
They are also receiving consulting advice from Izabella Babinska and Derek Vogel, a husband and wife team who met Adam and Kate last year, and are starting Folklore Wines & Cider of Charlevoix. Vogel is also vine manager at Petoskey Farms vineyard.
“These are the other two key people we could never do this without, they are all the thinking, teaching and assessing the vines, planning the to-do list for the summer, helping us know what to purchase for trellis hardware including bulk pricing. They even delivered it on their truck to the island,” said Chris.
When speaking about the community assistance, Chris said, “Without these people there would be no hope of keeping the vineyard.”
As with all of the victims, the hole left in their absence is also felt in other ways.
Kate was recently honored with an award from the National Utility Alliance Group. In her other life, she had a decorated career in emergency management.
Alan and Chris received the first Kate Leese Excellence award posthumously for their late daughter last month. Kate was a Utility Public Service Alliance convention director and senior account manager of Culver Company.
“She was so many amazing things in this world,” Chris said.
Going forward, the national utility alliance group wants to inspire excellence in public safety with an annual award in honor of Kate Leese's “indelible commitment to saving lives through writing disaster management plans and instructing utility service providers, first responders and city officials how to enact the plans under stress.”
“Kate and Adam had so much to give to this world,” said Chris. “Why they were taken away from us I just don't understand."
This article originally appeared on The Petoskey News-Review: Beaver Island plane crash victims Adam Kendall and Kate Leese honored after death
