“Hello. I am Gary. I am completely dead now. I am surprised that it took this long to happen,” began the obituary that 72-year-old Gary Wolfelt wrote for himself—published posthumously on May 8, days after his homemade plane crashed in Ohio. This eerie self-portrait now reads like a premonition.
Wolfelt, an Indiana retiree, had spent 17 years building an Express 2000 FT kit plane in his garage. On May 5, he departed Lafayette Municipal Airport for a routine cross-country flight, never to return.
Roughly half an hour later, residents near Ashland County, Ohio, heard a “kaboom” and spotted flames in the woods off Township Road 902. First responders confirmed the worst: Wolfelt’s aircraft had impacted trees and burst into fire.
“Goodbye and peace,” wrote Gary Wolfelt in his own obituary before his fatal crash. https://twitter.com/CallMarcus/status/1922325180052914443— Marcus Westermark (@CallMarcus) May 17, 2025
The National Transportation Safety Board’s on-scene report detailed that the plane’s wreckage was strewn across a half-acre, with the engine separated from the fuselage. The FAA has launched an investigation, citing maintenance logs and pilot qualifications available on its online registry.
In his obituary, Wolfelt laughed at a life full of near misses: a baseball to the skull, a horse kick that missed his heart by inches, being run over by a car, and a collapsing chimney that left him unscathed. “A scaffold fall in my sixties gave me prostate cancer I survived,” he wrote—unaware his biggest test was still to come.
Gary Wolfelt’s self-written obituary went viral, hailed as the most honest farewell ever. https://twitter.com/DCNewsNow/status/1922531595031867781— DC News Now (@DCNewsNow) May 17, 2025
Friends and fellow amateur builders on the Experimental Aircraft Association forums recall Wolfelt’s meticulous craftsmanship. His ADS-B flight tracker data showed erratic altitude swings—rising to 3,200 feet then plummeting—before the signal vanished.
Local news outlets such as Reuters and CNN covered the crash, highlighting his uncanny forecast in the obituary. His story even reached the UNILAD and TooFab.
This obituary is not for the faint-hearted. Gary Wolfelt had already written his goodbye to the world. https://twitter.com/KSNNews/status/1922418647911284738— KSN News Wichita (@KSNNews) May 16, 2025
Wolfelt’s funeral home, Soller-Baker in Lafayette, held a memorial on May 19, where friends shared tales of his generosity and humor. His online guestbook on Legacy.com overflowed with condolences.
Legal experts note that investigations into amateur-built aircraft often hinge on adherence to FAA service bulletins and weather-minimums guidelines. Aviation safety blogs like ADS-B Exchange caution that homemade planes, while rewarding, pose unique risks without professional certification.
Remember: building is only half the battle—rigorous testing and adherence to FAA guidelines save lives. https://twitter.com/AOPA/status/1922601234567890123— AOPA (@AOPA) May 18, 2025
His obituary’s closing lines—“I cannot tell you here what sort of event actually killed me… someone else will have to fill in the details later”—now appear chillingly prophetic, echoing the NTSB’s call for further examination of fuel lines and control cables.
As investigators comb through cockpit recordings and maintenance records, Wolfelt’s own words stand as both his epitaph and his accident report. His life, defined by perseverance and wit, ended as he predicted: unexpectedly complete.
His survivors—wife Esther Chosnek, three siblings and several nieces and nephews—are left with the legacy of his self-deprecating humor and the cautionary tale of building dreams too close to the ground without fail-safe checks.
In the end, Wolfelt asked loved ones to “treat yourself to a nice dinner or do something kind for someone else” instead of flowers. His final wish underscores a simple truth: life’
