If Bruce Davis’s life could be distilled into a single word, it would be music.

Born on September 24, 1921, in Spokane, Washington, Davis began his musical journey at the age of seven. Throughout his school years, music was a constant presence—he performed in his high school orchestra and band, and sang in the Glee Club. After graduating, he enrolled at Washington State University, though his studies were interrupted after just one semester by the outbreak of World War II. Davis joined the U.S. Navy, where he spent three years playing in the Navy band.

Following his discharge, he returned to Spokane, completed his degree, and set out to earn a living as a professional musician. His career took a pivotal turn in 1948 when fellow Spokane native, superstar Bing Crosby, attended one of his performances. Impressed, Crosby sought Davis out and encouraged him, telling him he had what it took to succeed in Hollywood.

Buoyed by Crosby’s confidence, Davis and his band relocated to California – a move he would never regret. Although he never reached superstardom, Davis enjoyed a solid and rewarding career. His quintet performed regularly in supper clubs and on the radio, but one of his most significant opportunities came when his orchestra landed a contract with the small California Hacienda hotel chain, best remembered today for the Hacienda casino that was on the Las Vegas Strip.

Somewhere along the way, Davis met Patti Gregg, born Mary Patricia Elem in Kansas on September 18, 1922. According to the 1950 census, Patti was a widowed mother of two young children working full-time as a waitress in Los Angeles. The two fell deeply in love and were married on November 13, 1951.

The trajectory of their lives changed forever on Monday, April 21, 1958. Bruce, then 36, and Patti, 35, boarded their private Cessna 182, a 4-seat, single-engine aircraft that was silver and accented with red and black trim. Their plan was straightforward: depart Fresno, California, stop roughly midway in Klamath Falls, Oregon, to refuel, and then continue on to their final destination—Bruce’s hometown of Spokane.

The first leg of their trip was uneventful.  Bruce successfully landed the plane in Klamath Falls at 1:30 p.m. But as they made their way along the final leg of their flight, the weather began to deteriorate rapidly.

At 3:35 p.m., Bruce radioed that he was flying at 15,000 feet (about 4,570 meters) in heavy cloud cover and was unsure of his exact position. He initially believed he was near Pendleton, just south of the Oregon–Washington border, but the airport radar there was unable to detect his aircraft. Although the control tower could hear his transmissions, they were unable to reach him to provide him with instructions.

A few minutes later, Bruce radioed again, this time reporting that he thought he was near Condon, roughly 75 miles (120 kilometers) southwest of Pendleton.

The airplane, with roughly two hours of fuel still onboard, would never arrive in Spokane. It was clear that it had gone down somewhere—but exactly where remained a mystery.

Bob Dunn, assistant director of the state board of aeronautics, said, “He could have come down anywhere in a 300-mile radius of Pendleton after running out of gas. That’s what is going to make a tough search — we’re going to have to cover plenty of territory.”

Almost immediately, aircraft were dispatched in search of the downed plane. By the following morning, twenty-seven planes were in the air, with even more joining the effort on Wednesday. All of them, however, were hindered by the same conditions that had doomed the Davis flight—low cloud ceilings, snow squalls, and poor visibility.

Forced to fly at lower altitudes, search crews faced grim odds. If the plane had gone down in the mountains, it was unlikely to be located before the brutal environment claimed the lives of the Davises—assuming they had survived the crash at all.

Then, at 6:10 AM Thursday morning – three bitterly cold nights after the plane had disappeared – a ghost appeared at the front door of Mr. and Mrs. Gus Robertson. He announced, “I am the flyer who has been lost since Monday.”

At first, the Robertsons didn’t know whether to believe him or not.  Gus said, “I wouldn’t open the screen door because he looked so tough.”

Their hesitation was short-lived, and “We took him in and took his shoes off and put his feet in hot water and gave him a cigarette.

“Checked his feet first for frostbite. If there’s frostbite, you never put ‘em in water. You use coal oil.”

As for his wife Patti, Bruce said that she had received a blow to the head during the crash, but had not been knocked unconscious. Unfortunately, Patti was unable to walk. “I moved her legs and determined they were not broken,” Bruce said. “Then I rigged up a shelter with parts of the plane, bundled her up, and set out.”

Time was the essence. A phone call was immediately made to the state police in John Day, Oregon, approximately 40 miles (~64 km) east of the Robertson home.

Search teams quickly jumped into action.  The airplane had gone down somewhere in the vicinity of Fields Peak, the highest point in Oregon’s Aldrich Mountains. The peak reaches 7,366 feet (2,245 m), but the nearest road could only reach around 3,000 feet (~910 m).  A base camp was set up there, with Dr. Martha van de Vlugt brought in to deal with Patti’s injuries, should she be found alive. Keep in mind that her husband Bruce had not seen her for nearly three days.

Airplanes combed the area for the crash site, but the weather still wasn’t cooperating. They were unable to locate it, but Bruce insisted that he could lead them to it. So, even though he had two broken ribs, he left his hospital bed, and the pilot had to lift him onto the search plane.

Finally, at 10:30 AM, Bill Wise of the Condon air patrol spotted the downed plane sitting upside-down in 4 feet (~1.22 m) of snow. As airplanes circled around the spot, rescuers on the ground made their way to see if Patti was still alive.

Now that the wreckage had been located, the search plane carrying Bruce returned to the airport. As he emerged from the plane, he told reporters, “They are at the wreckage. There is a stretcher out. I have a great deal of hope.”

Finally, a rescue helicopter landed in John Day, and when the door was opened, Patti was taken out on a stretcher with a broad smile on her face. As the press approached to snap her picture, she said, “Oh, I’m on. I wish I could comb my hair.”

Captain Robert Amball, the flight surgeon, said that she was in great shape and that he didn’t administer any medication, but did place dry socks on her feet.  He said, “It was actually superfluous, she was in such good shape.” He added, “You just never know, do you?”

The press reported that Patti and Bruce were taken to John Day General Hospital, where Dr. Martha van de Vlugt and her husband, Dr. Jerry van de Vlugt, known locally as simply Dr. Martha and Dr. Jerry, were the attending physicians. (In fact, the hospital was likely Blue Mountain General Hospital in nearby Prairie City, where the couple had served as its primary physicians since its opening on September 14, 1940.)

Considering what they had endured, the couple was in remarkably good condition. In addition to Bruce’s broken ribs, both had numerous cuts and bruises. Patti’s fingers were blackened by frostbite, as were her feet up to the ankles. She had also fractured her pelvis in the crash, which left her unable to walk.

Even so, they laughed and joked as they lay recovering in their hospital beds. From there, they began to recount their ordeal to the press.

After the crash, the first thing Bruce did was unfasten their safety belts and leave the airplane. After realizing that his wife couldn’t walk, he fashioned the doors into a protective shelter for her.

Patti said, “The thing I remember most about my three nights on the mountain was that it was very, very cold. I didn’t know what cold was before.

“Bruce put all the clothes on me he could find. Four sweaters I was taking with me to Spokane. Two pairs of pants – one of them his – and his coat and my coat. Lots of clothes.”

She added, “We tried to start a fire, but it wouldn’t stay lit more than three minutes, it was so wet and windy. So, he started for help.”

Bruce said, “I thought I heard a car. I certainly didn’t think of any three-day excursion.”

For three cold, blustery days, he plodded through deep, untracked snow. At one point, he stumbled upon an abandoned ranch house. Inside, he found a small amount of rice, a pair of pants that were too small for his frame, an old coat, and a battered hat. It wasn’t much, but it was better than nothing.

Meanwhile, Patti remained stranded high on the mountain, unable to move about at all.

“All three nights it snowed. Lots of snow. I couldn’t raise up unless I leaned against a tree, and all the clothes I had on didn’t make it any easier.

“But I got our maps and put them over my feet. And when the snow would pile up on the maps, I would kick them off and get the snow off.

“Sometimes I cried and sometimes I laughed and often I talked to myself. But I told myself, ‘You just can’t become hysterical because there is no one here to watch you.’

“There wasn’t anything to eat except two Lifesavers and half a piece of gum. I broke each Lifesaver in half to make them go farther, and I’d eat them with snow. It was kind of like a mint cocktail. And I ate pine needles, too, just for a change of taste.

“I didn’t have anything to read so I read the code book and I tried to figure out some way to make a distress signal or SOS or something. But I couldn’t. And I knew nobody would see it anyway, it was so cloudy. Thursday was the first day I saw the sun.”

And that’s when the rescue teams finally spotted the wreckage.

“Finally I saw planes, so I rolled downhill, out of the shelter Bruce had made. I waved my arms and sang and shouted and then I thought I’d better not carry on too much, they’ll think I’m some animal.

“I didn’t see any animals at all. I did see some birds. I remember thinking to myself, ‘This woods is for the birds.’

“I just kept talking and talking and shouting, and suddenly somebody said something back, and they were there.

“I have been asked if I prayed. At a time like this, everyone does, I believe.”

While the couple were all smiles and happy to be alive, the reality was that Patti’s health wasn’t as good as initially reported.

On Monday, May 12, 1958, three weeks after being rescued, Dr. Jerry operated on her to remove her left foot.  There was also concern that she would lose some of the toes on her right foot.

Dr. Martha told reporters, “Her general condition is fine, and her mental attitude is wonderful.”

She added, “They have known from the beginning that this was serious. But as she puts it, ‘loss of feet is a small price to pay for a life.’ She has a really good philosophy.”

One month later, the couple announced plans to repay the community’s generosity by bringing a planeload of Hollywood talent to town for a summer fundraiser. Warren Bayly, owner of the Hacienda hotels, offered to fly the entire troupe in free of charge aboard the company’s private DC-3. Patti and Bruce hoped that all proceeds would go toward the construction of a new $400,000 hospital (approximately $4.5 million today) that the county was building in John Jay. The hospital would eventually open in 1960, but I was unable to find any contemporary reports of the fundraiser. That absence may be explained by the fact that Patti’s recovery took far longer than anyone expected.

One week after her left foot amputation, Dr. Jerry surgically removed the toes from Patti’s right foot. Future surgeries were still anticipated, including a planned skin graft from her left leg to her right foot. Basically, that would leave her with the bulk of her right foot and a left leg that could be fitted with an artificial foot.

Dr. Martha predicted, “Modern prosthesis will have her almost as good as new one day.”

By this time, Bruce Davis had returned back to his job in California, but he made frequent visits to see his wife.

During Patti’s three-month stay in the hospital, she would undergo a total of five surgeries. That included further amputation on her left leg so that she could be fitted with the artificial limb, and the planned skin graft.

She would fly back to Fresno on Tuesday, July 22, 1958. As Patti stepped off the plane, a crowd of friends and reporters greeted her. She was incredibly upbeat about her future.

“Don’t call me a cripple. I’m going to learn to walk again, and then I’ll do all the other things I used to do, like swimming, dancing, and golf.”

As for her surgeon, Dr. Jerry, she told reporters, “I owe a lot to him. I owe him a foot. Another doctor said it would have to be amputated. He said he would save it and he did. God bless him.”

To which Dr Jerry said, “She is the bravest patient I have ever met.”

The next time the press would catch up with Patti would be five years after the crash.  The opening paragraph of a syndicated United Press article reads, “When Pat Davis of Fresno glides on the dance floor, walks along the golf links or dips into a swimming pool, she is fulfilling a promise she made five years ago.”

The story reported that Patti had undergone a total of fourteen surgeries on her legs, which left her with a 3-1/2” (8.9 cm) section of her right foot and her left foot amputated beneath the knee.

She explained that “When I swim, I have to scoot out into the water and scoot back. All the movement has to be done with the arms.”

One might have expected that she would never want to fly again, but the opposite proved true. During those five years following the crash, the couple purchased two additional airplanes, and Patti often took the controls during their flights. As she put it, “I think I could bring a plane in.” In other words, she refused to let her injuries stand in the way of her living her life to the fullest.

In the years that followed, Bruce became Hacienda’s entertainment director. The job came with its perks: he was able to book many of the all-time greats—Frank Sinatra, Rosemary Clooney, Nat King Cole, Patti Page, Sammy Davis Jr., and others—and when they performed, Bruce often joined the accompanying bands on horn.

Somewhere along the way, he also launched his own company, Star-Ads, which went on to produce and record more than 4,000 commercials. Both Bruce and Patti lent their voices to many of those spots.

The couple retired in 1977 and returned to the Spokane area, where they renovated a family cabin on Newman Lake, about 15 miles (24 km) northeast of the city. They lived there until Patti’s death on Saturday, June 26, 1999, at the age of 76. After her passing, Bruce moved to Spokane Valley, sharing a duplex with his daughter, Kim.

In truth, Bruce never fully retired. For many years, he hosted a big-band radio show every Friday night on Spokane public radio station KPBX, and he continued performing locally with his two bands, The Variety Pak and The Dixie Dandies. Remarkably, at age 91, Bruce played a gig at the Spokane Club the night before his death on October 29, 2012.

I began this story by stating that Bruce’s life could be defined by just one word. That was music.  But I’ll add one more to it: Love.  The love that he shared with his wife Patti, the love for his family, and his overall love of life. Useless? Useful? I’ll leave that for you to decide.