University President Dave Frohnmayer and his wife Lynn received word Sunday that several members of their extended family in Germany died as they were returning from France in their private plane.
Lynn Frohnmayer said her family was “utterly devastated” upon hearing the news that two of their German relations had been killed when their plane went down near Lyon, France.
Dave Frohnmayer is currently in Washington, D.C. and could not be reached for comment.
The only information she had is that the plane crashed, Frohnmayer said, and all aboard were killed. Victims of the crash included the University President’s cousin Heinz Frohnmayer, also the plane’s pilot, and his teenage son, Paul, as well as another young woman.
Dave Frohnmayer’s parents met the European relatives when they were traveling through the family’s ancestral home of Göppingen, Lynn Frohnmayer said. She said the two Frohnmayer clans can trace their roots back to the 15th century and quickly renewed their family bonds.
“The two families became very good friends,” she said.
The recent plane crash is especially tragic for the German Frohnmayers, she said, because the family lost a daughter to a car accident a few years earlier.
Paul Frohnmayer had lived with the Frohnmayers in Eugene last year, and the loss of such an “incredible young man” was extremely hard to take, Frohnmayer said. She said Paul had stayed with the family while he attended South Eugene High School and had excelled at golf, tennis and soccer.
She said even though German had been his native language, he had easily mastered English and was at the top of most of his high school classes.
“He was exceedingly intelligent,” she said. “He became a very cherished part of our family.”