The mystery revolving around a missing flag on Medicine Bow Peak that honored crash victims of United Air Lines Flight 409 traces a family that also wanted to salute a father who served in the U.S. Air Force.
It also includes a Casper man who was involved in the rescue of the flag from a nearby lake.
Solving the mystery began with a Kansas woman’s quest recently to hike to the location of the Oct. 6, 1955, crash that took 66 lives.
Lisa West Stonehouse told Cowboy State Daily earlier this month that when she returned to the site recently she discovered the flag at an ad-hoc memorial missing.
She had seen it in her initial hike up the mountain in 2025 and vowed to bring one back a year later.
Daniel Tanis, a Fort Collins, Colorado, resident, and his brothers Rick and Rodger, read the story with interest.
Their extended family has been placing a new flag at the location annually since 2019. In 2020, they carried and placed their Air Force veteran father’s ashes at the site.
“It’s just kind of sacred ground, that’s where all those souls in my opinion took off,” Tanis said. “We just kind of feel like it’s something that should be maintained and the experience we had with our father and placing his ashes there.
"It’s like he’s kind of the steward of that site. Every time I go there, I get goosebumps. I get emotional.”
Tanis said the first time the family visited Medicine Bow Peak was in 1970. They lived in the Chicago area, where their dad, Ralph Tanis, worked as an electrician.
He brought the six-member family to the mountain on a camping trip pulling a pop-up trailer.
It wasn’t until in later years that Tanis said he understood why his father took them to the shores of Mirror Lake, just below the peak, to camp.
He remembers seeing sunlight reflect off remaining parts of the airplane that was Flight 409 on Medicine Bow Peak.
USAF Aircraft Mechanic
Ralph Tanis served four years in the Air Force as an aircraft mechanic. His son said he believes his father chose the site not only for the beauty but to see and experience the crash site.
Ralph Tanis went to Chicago Vocational High School during World War II and took aviation mechanic classes.
It stirred his interest in aviation, Daniel Tanis said.
“He got to work on some real vintage World War II airplanes,” he said. “He had the bug for life.”
At 17, Ralph Tanis saved up money to take flying lessons and achieved his private pilot’s license.
In the Air Force, Ralph Tanis was stationed at Mountain Home Air Force Base in Idaho and Malmstrom Air Force Base in Great Falls, Montana.
After the service, his love for aviation transitioned to aircraft mechanic work in the Chicago area, but with a growing family he needed to make more money so he trained to become an electrician.
Tanis said he and his brothers later helped their dad buy a Cessna 172 Skyhawk with the number N-2506Y from an Eastern Airlines pilot in his dad’s church.
“The three of us went in together and we decided to buy this plane,” he said.
'Life’s Dream'
His son said Ralph Tanis got to “realize his life’s dream.”
During his working career, the senior Tanis kept his aircraft mechanic’s qualifications up to date and worked side jobs at Chicago’s Midway Airport. He signed off on mechanical work for private plane owners.
Daniel Tanis said his dad became friends with an airline company CEO and once met an astronaut.
Tanis said when they had the plane, the father and sons all had hats embroidered with the number of the plane.
Those were “cherished” among the family. He kept one on his fireplace mantle as a “touchstone” to his dad.
When he was in his 80s, Ralph Tanis bought a computer and decided to get recertification as an aircraft mechanic through the FAA.
“Sure enough, after his third attempt at 88, he became the oldest certified A&P inspector, which was pretty cool,” Daniel Tanis said.
In 2019, Ralph Tanis died. That same year, Daniel Tanis’ son was living in Fort Collins and decided to hike the Snowy Range that includes Medicine Bow Peak.
Through the stories he had heard from his grandfather and father, he informed Daniel Tanis he was going to check out the crash site.
After he did, he sent photos of the site that had a little tattered flag on a stick and a Tupperware container with some personal artifacts that had been gathered as a memorial.
Daniel Tanis was still living in Chicago at the time, and said he got a “shiver” when he saw the photos.
“I said, ‘I have to come out,’” he recalled. “I go, ‘That site needs to be properly adorned with a new flag. And so the following month, October, I drove out and met my son and we went out and put in the flag and kind of dressed up the area a little bit.”
Daniel Tanis said they zip-tied the flag to a piece of metal airframe. He also took one of his father’s hats with the Cessna number embroidered on it and zip-tied it to the frame as well.
The initial flag honoring Flight 409 victims and a hat honoring Ralph Tanis was placed on the mountain in October 2019 as a storm moved in. (Daniel Tanis) 
A Casper man reported that this flag was found in the water on July 4 of this year at the Medicine Bow Peak crash site. (Thomas Sawyer) 
The flag that was pulled out from the water on Medicine Bow Peak. (Thomas Sawyer) 
A pond of water sits near the Medicine Bow Peak crash site. (Thomas Sawyer)
'Where Daddy Has To Go'
Tanis sent his two brothers and mother photos of the hat and flag at the site.
“I said, ‘Well, I think I know where Daddy has to go,’” he recalled. “I still get emotional thinking about it.”
The next year, 2020, in the third week of September, the family gathered in Wyoming from Washington state, Chicago, and elsewhere as the COVID pandemic lockdown continued.
The Mullen Fire that burned through nearly 180,000 acres in Colorado and southern Wyoming was exploding.
Tanis said there were wind gusts of up to 70 mph, but they hiked to the site. All the while he wondered if his dad’s hat and flag were still there.
They were.
The family performed a ceremony, told stories and shared memories about their dad, and then placed his ashes at the site.
Tanis said shortly after that he moved to Fort Collins and would hike frequently to the site. Since 2020, members of the family have returned to replace the flag that flew for a year and check on the hat.
“The first flag went to my mother,” he said.
He remembers carrying the folded flag and arriving at the airport to get on his Southwest flight to Chicago. The plane was painted in red, white, and blue.
Another Flag And Hat
Plans call for members of the family to return to the site in the next couple of weeks and put up another flag and embroidered hat with the Cessna number on it for Ralph Tanis.
Meanwhile Thomas Sawyer of Casper contacted Cowboy State Daily by email and said he was present on Medicine Bow Peak on July 4 when a flag on a wooden pole was pulled out of pond nearby. He included a photo of the flag in the water and raised concerns about unintentional disrespect of the nation’s symbol.
“I think their hearts are in the right place,” he said. “I just thought that the outcome of that may not be as they intended.”
An attempt to reach Sawyer and clarify what happened to the flag was not successful by publication time.
Daniel Tanis also was unavailable for a comment related to the flag found July 4.
This year, the missing flag that Kansas’ Stonehouse sought to see on the mountain was supposed to go to Daniel Tanis’ niece who is getting married in October. She has been hiking to the site with the family for the past three years.
“I know she probably wanted to incorporate that somehow into her wedding ceremony,” Daniel Tanis said. “I don’t try and think of why it’s gone. I know that we’ll go and put in one and continue stewardship of its holy ground.”
Contact Dale Killingbeck at dale@cowboystatedaily.com
Dale Killingbeck can be reached at dale@cowboystatedaily.com.
