page_title: Cowboy Copas
section_title: Aircraft accident
hierarchical_section_title: Cowboy Copas / Biography / Aircraft accident
caption_attribution_description: English: Cowboy Copas Ohio Historical Marker.
context_page_description: Lloyd Estel Copas, known by his stage name Cowboy Copas, was an American country music singer. He was popular from the 1940s until his death in the 1963 plane crash that also killed country stars Patsy Cline and Hawkshaw Hawkins. Copas was a member of the Grand Ole Opry.
context_section_description: On March 3, 1963, Copas, Patsy Cline, Hawkshaw Hawkins and others performed at a benefit concert at the Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Hall in Kansas City, Kansas for the family of disc jockey Cactus Jack Call, who had died the previous December in an automobile accident.
  On March 5, they left for Nashville in a Piper Comanche piloted by Copas' son-in-law (and Cline's manager), Randy Hughes. After stopping to refuel in Dyersburg, Tennessee, the craft took off at 6:07 p.m. CT. The plane flew into severe weather and crashed at 6:29 p.m. in a forest near Camden, Tennessee, 90 miles from the destination. There were no survivors. A stone marker, dedicated on July 6, 1996, marks the location of the crash.
  Copas was buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Gardens in Goodlettsville, Tennessee in "Music Row" with Hawkins and other country music stars.
caption: Reverse side of marker
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