Cape Cod History

1966: Family of six dies in Barnstable Airport crash

Six in Coast Family Killed In Cape Cod Plane Crash
Dr. Sugino, his wife and three daughters are dead

On this day, June 27, 1966, a Monday, Cape Cod experienced its worse air crash to date when a visiting doctor and his entire family died in a crash at the Barnstable Airport:

HYANNIS, Mass., June 26 (AP) A Los Angeles optometrist, his wife and their four children, returning from an outing on Nantucket Island, were killed today when their single-engine rented plane crashed in woods near Barnstable Municipal Airport.

The dead included Dr. Arthur T. Sugino, 41, Mrs. Ruth Sugino, 46, and his three daughters Catherine 18, Victoria 14, Craig 12 and Sandra 8...  (Read the rest on right.)

The History of the Asian American Optometric Society mentions the Doctor's death here and attributes his demise to a delay in the course of the society's progress:

"In 1966, during an eight hour round trip drive to one of the early California Optometric Association Contact Lens Seminars held in Fresno, doctors; Arthur T. Sugino, Takao Shishino and Rodger T. Kame had conceptualized a 'Japanese American Optometric Society' to address the needs of an emerging group of young optometrists. There existed a desire to fraternize the existing Japanese American optometric community, which tended to consist of isolated individual practices, which were not in touch with one another.

"The implementation of these ideas was put on hold due to the untimely and unfortunate death of Dr. Sugino in an airplane crash in June of 1966..."