The only SAR-related funeral I have attended was for the pilot and copilot of a helo that crashed on their last planned flight of the day; they had just ferried some members of our organization back to base camp.

In front of our county courthouse is a firefighters memorial. the date of August 26, 1972, is listed for about seven individuals. I checked back issues and sure enough, it was helo related - an entire fire crew and pilot crashed while working a blaze in the local mountains.

No wonder I got hazardous duty pay when using helos....