Top officers in the Bruno's supermarket chain made it a Christmastime tradition to fly to six Southeastern states, delivering Yuletide greetings personally to their employees in 240 stores. Wednesday, six of them handed out "Happy Holidays" buttons, then boarded their twin-engine Beechcraft for another supermarket. A few minutes later the plane crashed into a mountain, killing all six company officials, an advertising executive and the two pilots.
The accident all but wiped out the upper echelons of the chain, founded by the son of Italian immigrants in 1932. Two of the dead were the founder's brothers. One was the president's father.
It was a tragic example of why many companies do not allow their top managers to fly on the same plane.
In 1989, three top Trump casino executives died when a helicopter crashed between New York and Atlantic City, N.J. Some analysts consider that crash the beginning of the demise of Trump's empire, currently tied up in bankruptcy court.
From the White House to organized crime families, there are limits on the number of ranking managers who can travel together.
President Bush and Vice President Dan Quayle never take the same aircraft, even if they are attending the same event.
Even some big airlines try to keep key executives off the same plane. They prohibit members of cockpit crews from eating the same in-flight meals to minimize the impact of possible food poisoning.
The grocery chain's president and chief executive officer, Ronald J. Bruno, survived because he was with another planeload of Bruno's officials spreading Christmas cheer in Mississippi and Tennessee.
Thursday, Ronald Bruno was named chairman. His father, chairman Angelo J. Bruno, was among those killed.
"We have to carry on in spite of our grief," Ronald Bruno, 39, said in a statement from company headquarters in Birmingham, Ala. "We have a responsibility to our customers, our employees and our shareholders, and we intend to fulfill it," he said.
Federal investigators spent Thursday examining burned remnants of the aircraft. The Buno's chain turned its attention to surviving the compounded loss of family and the management for its 21,600 employees.
In addition to Angelo Bruno, those killed were his brother Lee J. Bruno, vice chairman; Sam Vacarella, senior vice president of merchandise; Edward C. Hyde, vice president of store operations; R. Randolph Paige Jr., vice president of personnel; and Karl Mollica, director of produce.
Also killed were Mary Faust, an account executive with Steiner-Bressler, Bruno's advertising agency, and pilots John Tesney and Rob Stamps.
Joseph Bruno began his enterprise with a corner grocery in Birmingham and $600 borrowed from his family. Bruno's annual sales currently exceed $2.6-billion.
The chain has stores in Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Tennessee, Mississippi and South Carolina.
The stores operate under various names: Piggly Wiggly, Food World, Food Fair, Foodmax, Consumer Warehouse Foods, Bruno's Finer Foods and Bruno's Food and Pharmacy stores.
In a tradition going back at least 15 years, Bruno's executives had been visiting dozens of their stores for 10 days when the crash occurred. They had 10 more days of holiday stops to go.
Clouds obscured the top of Lavender Mountain, a 1,700-foot-high peak near Rome, Ga., at the time of the crash Wednesday morning, said Walter "Waldo" Dodd, 57, a former Air Force pilot and commander of the local Civil Air Patrol unit.