Fallen Pilot Will Be Memorialized at Park

A picnic table and benches at Harper Park will be named in memory of Air Force Capt. Timothy Shafer, a former resident who was a pilot of the plane that crashed in 1996, killing U.S. Commerce Secretary Ron Brown and 34 others.

The City Council this week accepted a request from John Campbell of Newport Beach, a friend of Shafer’s family, to install the privately funded bench and corresponding plaque.

“We raised our families within half a block of each other” in Costa Mesa, Campbell said. “Tim was my youngest boy’s best friend and they went from elementary school all the way to Sacramento State together.”

Campbell initially requested that Harper Park be renamed for Shafer, but municipal policy requires that parks next to schools--in this case Harper Elementary--keep the campus name. As a boy, Shafer attended Harper school, which is now closed. The bench and plaque were approved as an alternative by city parks commissioners.

Shafer, 33 when the plane went down in foul weather in Croatia, fit the city’s criteria for the honor as one of those who provided “significant long-term service to the citizens of Costa Mesa or gave their lives in the service of the nation or the community.”

Born in Newport Beach, Shafer grew up in Costa Mesa and graduated from Newport Harbor High School, where he was on the track team, in 1980. He attended Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa and graduated from Sacramento State University before joining the Air Force in 1989.

He flew cargo planes in the San Francisco Bay area until being transferred to Germany to transport dignitaries. That was six months before his death.