4 Kiwanians Mourned by Family, Friends : Tragedy: Relatives and associates draw on their memories to help cope with the deaths. Officials do not yet know why their plane crashed.

Ricky Fosnight owned a pair of McDonald’s restaurant franchises in north Orange County, had two daughters and a place in Newport Beach overlooking the bay. But as as his mother tells it, he still needed a pastime--”something for fun.”

So about five years ago, after taking a plane ride with a friend, he found it: flying. “He used to say that was the greatest way to go--he just loved to get up there in the air and have that control. He just loved it,” Hazel Fosnight, 79, said Friday.

But this week, something went tragically wrong for Fosnight and the three other Buena Park Kiwanis members flying with him to visit two other clubs near the Arizona border. Federal investigators were still sorting through the wreckage Friday to try to find out what.

As friends looked on, Fosnight’s single-engine Beechcraft Bonanza took a sharp dive into a marshy bank on the California side of the the Colorado River on Thursday morning, just minutes after taking off from the Parker, Ariz., airport. The four were en route back to Fullerton Municipal Airport after attending two Kiwanis meetings.

There was no fire, no loud explosion, just what witnesses described as a “soft” crash into the marsh, investigators said. The bodies of the four were discovered inside after sheriff’s deputies waded into the marsh to get to the wreckage.

Killed in the crash, friends and family said, were Fosnight, 47, the pilot; Marcel LaFont, 86, a retired optometrist in Buena Park; Gerald Laub, 53, a semi-retired businessman who lived in Big Bear and owned several bars in Buena Park and elsewhere northern Orange County; and Joe Maertz, 68, of Buena Park, who owned a locksmith shop.

“Right now, we don’t have anything that would appear to be a causation,” Jim Bryant, a spokesman for the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department, said Friday.

“This was unusual. Nobody seems to know” what happened, he said. “The weather was good--a slight breeze--and the plane didn’t have any problems prior to that. The plane went into a shallow bank to the left and just never recovered, apparently.”

Witnesses said the plane made a sudden change in direction that left its wings almost vertical. But officials at the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board, which are investigating the crash, said they had do not have a cause for the accident yet.

Family members and friends from the Kiwanis Club said plans have been made for memorials for the men.

LaFont’s son, who took over his father’s optometry practice in Buena Park, closed his office for the day.

Fellow Kiwanian Herbert Folsom, who bade the men goodby at the Parker airport Thursday morning, then saw the crash, went to Knott’s Berry Farm with his daughter and grandchildren, who were trying to cheer him up.

It didn’t really work, Folsom said. “You cant get this thing out of your mind,” he said.

But friends and family members could at least draw on a deep supply of stories and memories to help them cope with the loss. The four had all been officers in the Buena Park Kiwanis chapter--which LaFont founded in 1955--and their dozens of years together there offered a rich source of recollections.

Among Kiwanis members, for example, Joe Maertz was known for the annual car trip he made to his native Oregon. There he would get caseloads of potatoes, which he would bring back to sell at the Kiwanis stand at the October Silverado Days in Buena Park.

“He figured he could get ‘em cheaper through our relatives there,” said his widow, Bernice Maertz, 62, of Buena Park. “He was so proud of that.”

Said Wally Miller, president of the Buena Park Kiwanis chapter: “We didn’t think that was anything unusual--that’s sort of the thing Joe would do. He’d go out of his way. Joe was always the person we’d look to to pick up a grill for our pancake breakfast and things like that.”

Marcel LaFont was known for his seemingly endless supply of energy.

LaFont had come to Orange County from Kansas during the Depression--”with hardly two dimes to rub together,” he would tell friends.

He worked for a while as a jeweler, then studied optometry. He built a successful practice on Beach Boulevard and also made some lucrative investments--although Miller said LaFont also lost about $800,000 in the recent collapse of Mercury Savings & Loan.

LaFont was known as “Doc” to most, and “the Miracle Man” to some.

“He was just all over the place, on the go,” said Cliff Rothrock of Anaheim, a Kiwanis division leader. “Everyone was wondering how he could do it at his age.”

Indeed, friends said LaFont stayed active through the years, not only in the Kiwanis but also in the Elks Lodge and Boy Scout troops, regularly taking part in camping trips and hikes. He was even bowling several times a week.

When LaFont’s wife, Velma, received a diagnosis of cancer in the early ‘70s and was told she might have only a year to live, the couple became intent on “living every minute to the max,” traveling frequently through the United States and Europe, said Brenda Miller, Wally’s wife.

“I think they wore out three motor homes,” she said. In fact, Velma proved the doctors wrong--she lived another dozen years, Brenda Miller said.

Gerry Laub, a semi-retired businessman who lived with his wife in Big Bear, had a quiet demeanor that belied his occupation as owner of several dance clubs in the area, friends said. The bars included one in Buena Park, the Humdinger, that the state is trying to close down because of drug allegations against employees.

“Gerry was a gentleman,” said Bill Farris, his attorney and friend and a fellow Kiwanis club member. “If you had to look around the club and say which ones own a beer bar--a bikini bar--he’d be the last one you’d pick out. He wasn’t flashy, he wasn’t loud, he was very quiet-spoken.”

As for Fosnight, the pilot and McDonald’s franchise owner, his mother said his 25-year-old daughter will be married as scheduled this weekend, despite the tragedy.

“She just insisted that her daddy would say, ‘Carry on,’ so she’s going to go through with it,” Hazel Fosnight said.