Extracted from The Shreveport Times (Shreveport, LA)
Sunday, August 31, 1952

Small Craft Strikes Sand Bar, Burns

Victims Identified as J. Ben Beaird, Jr., Miss Norma McPhail

J. Ben Beaird, Jr., 20, son of the founder of the J. B. Beaird corporation [was] killed when the the two-place light plane in which [he was] flying crashed 2 1/2 mile south of here on a Red river sand bar and burned at 4:30 p.m. yesterday.

The tragedy was the second to strike the Beaird family in recent weeks. On July 18, Walton F. Beaird, 37, a brother of yesterday's crash victim, shot himself fatally in his home. He died two days later in a local hospital. He had been in ill health for several years.

Beaird, a midget race car driver who at times raced under the name of Dick Benfried, had borrowed the craft from the Bourgois brothers' firm.

Beaird made his home at 355 College street.

Funeral services for the local youth will be at 4:30 p.m. Sunday at the Wellman funeral home. The Rev. C. W. Quad, associate pastor of the First Methodist church, will officiate. Beaird's body will be taken overland to Dallas, Texas for cremation, following the funeral services.

The youth, son of the late J. B. Beaird, Sr., founder of the Beaird corporation, is survived by his mother, Mrs. Maude Beaird of Shreveport; one sister, Mrs. Maude Elizabeth Tyson of Shreveport; a half-sister, Mrs. Charles C. Smith of New Orleans, and two half-brothers, J. Pat and Charles T. Beaird of Shreveport.