Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
On this date ...
1961: Ella Conn hadn't planned to go to Cuba. She left Miami intent on flying to eastern New Mexico so she could spend time with her daughter, Sug Conn, a student at Eastern New Mexico University. Instead, Ella and 37 other Eastern Air Lines passengers found themselves hijacked and in Havana.
“I was never scared, only anxious to get to Clovis,” Ella Conn told a Clovis News-Journal reporter when the ordeal ended.
She said she had no idea there was a problem until the plane prepared for landing on July 24.
“We're landing in Havana, Cuba, at gunpoint,” was the announcement that came through the plane's intercom. “Be calm. We'll probably be leaving in about 15 minutes.”
The ordeal actually lasted 29 hours, but Conn said the passengers were treated well, fed and given freedom to roam an airport hotel. The only time she said she was concerned was when she noticed a U.S. Air Force jet buzzing the passenger plane before learning of the hijacking. “Thoughts of those air collisions entered my mind,” she said.
Her captors, she said, “treated us like royalty.”
United Press International reported the hijacking may have been a plot to “avenge” seizure of a number of Cuban airliners for unpaid bills in the United States.
Immediately after the plane returned safely to Miami, Ella Conn tried again to reach her daughter in Clovis, this time successfully. Sug Conn, 20, had qualified for the Miss New Mexico pageant that weekend in Hobbs and her mother wanted to help her prepare for the competition.
Sug Conn did not win the pageant, but she soon began a long career in the fashion industry and became well known for philanthropic service in Louisville, Ky., where she lived after graduating with honors from ENMU.
She died in 2012 at the age of 71. Her mother died in 1994 at age 85.
Pages Past is compiled by David Stevens. Contact:
