About a year ago, Frank Corder was musing with his brother, John, about the notoriety of a West German teenager who flew a Cessna single-engine airplane into Moscow’s Red Square.
“He said, `Hey, check that guy out. Hey, he really made a name for himself,’ ” John Corder recalled Monday.
Earlier, at 1:49 a.m. Monday, Frank Corder, 38, crashed a stolen single-engine Cessna onto the White House lawn-making a name for himself, but not surviving to receive the kind of attention that went to 19-year-old Mathias Rust who landed safely in Red Square in May 1987 after flying undetected 550 miles through Soviet airspace.
Corder’s death in such a public manner stunned his family and friends, but they knew he was in emotional trouble. Three weeks earlier, he had separated from his wife of 10 years, Lydia, and essentially was living out of his car-a canary yellow 1982 Cadillac Coupe de Ville.
John Corder said his brother was not politically minded, was not registered to vote and did not see President Clinton when he appeared in Aberdeen Sunday. In his speech at Aberdeen, Clinton mentioned the need to help veterans at the Perry Point, Md., Veterans Administration Hospital, where Frank once was treated in the detoxification unit.
Ups and downs-mostly downs-punctuated Corder’s life. Twice divorced, a high school dropout, an Army washout and an alcoholic, his highs were very high and his lows very low, his brother recalled. His arrest record shows a series of scrapes with the law, many involving drugs, alcohol and driving.
“He always wanted to be top dog,” said John Corder, 41, “There was a tendency for him always to want to be on top.”
But the top was never there for him. A truck driver by profession, he had his own trucking company for a while. Passing himself off as a successful businessman, he flashed a gold-embossed business card that read “Delmarva Freight, Inc., Warehouse and Transportation Services, Frank Corder, president.”
In fact, the company consisted of Corder and a truck. It went broke in 1993. That same year, his father, William, died at age 65.
It was William Corder who instilled a love of airplanes in his sons, said John Corder. William Corder was an airplane engine mechanic and taught his boys about them.
Recently, Frank Corder had been building his own small, fiberglass airplane in the garage of the home where he grew up. The home is owned by his mother, Dorothy, and sits in a modest neighborhood of small two-bedroom dwellings at the edge of the Aberdeen Proving Ground military installation in northern Maryland. The plane, never completed, remains in pieces in the garage.
Frank Corder took a flying lesson two years ago near his hometown, but his instructor became aware of his past and refused to let him continue.
“He came here for a lesson one time,” recalled Joe Kesser, 71, a retired Navy man who manages the Harford County Airpark and gives flying lessons.
“He came for another but a state trooper friend of mine said he’d been arrested for drugs. I asked him about it and he hemmed and hawed. I said, `It’s best you go elsewhere for lessons’ and I refused to fly with him.”
It was the Cessna single-engine plane in which he had taken that lesson that police officials said Corder stole from the airport for his early morning flight to Washington, about 70 miles away.
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Kesser, who owns the plane, said stealing a small plane like the Cessna 150 is “so simple it’s pathetic,” especially for someone who is familiar with airplane engines.
Les Jones, an attorney who represented Corder for several months last year, said Corder seemed not to care about his legal troubles and managed to wiggle out of several situations simply by not showing up for court appearances. Jones said he dropped Corder as a client last October after Corder paid him with a $2,500 check that bounced.
On July 18, 1986, Corder was arrested for drunken driving and speeding. The case was dropped on May 6, 1991. Jones said Corder got out of it by failing to appear.
On July 22, 1986, Corder was arrested but never prosecuted for malicious destruction of property and disorderly conduct. In 1992, he was convicted on a drunken driving charge in Harford County, Jones said.
On Oct. 4, 1993, he was charged in Baltimore with possession of a controlled substance (marijuana) and having an open container of alcohol in a car. He pleaded not guilty but was convicted on March 23, 1994, and was placed on one year of probation and handed a suspended 90-day jail term.
He also had three open cases in Harford County involving problems with his driver’s license and failing to appear in court, and a Virginia driver’s license was suspended when he failed to appear on a reckless driving charge.
“He was a very lucky individual as far as the judicial system was concerned,” Jones said.
Last year, Corder entered the detoxification program at the Perry Point VA Hospital, where his wife worked as a nurse. He stayed seven days, according to Joan Copeland, 45, who was his nurse in the program and also lived across the street from Lydia and Frank Corder on the Perry Point grounds.
Many employees of the hospital rent homes on the campus, which overlooks the picturesque wide mouth of the Susquehanna River where it flows into the Atlantic.
“I had him as a patient,” said Copeland. “He was a very quiet and laid-back person. I can’t imagine him being violent.”
She said Corder appeared to have been alcohol-free for a year, but said an emotional trauma such as a separation might have driven him back to drink.
Corder’s first wife, Patricia Colleen Corder, filed for divorce on Feb. 28, 1979, but the case was dismissed three months later. She filed again on Nov. 28, 1979, and the divorce was granted on March 3, 1980. They had a daughter together, Shannon Corder, now 17. He remarried, and later filed for divorce from Randa E. Corder on April 4, 1983. It was granted on Sept. 21, 1983.
John Corder said he had spoken with his brother once since his separation from Lydia, and although Frank was “pretty normal,” he was upset about the breakup of his marriage. John Corder, also a truck driver who once worked for Frank, said he and his brother were very close, both as children when they were in the Boy Scouts together, and as adults.
“He was pretty much a private person, a loner. He and I were it, pretty much,” John Corder said.
John Corder said Frank got his pilot’s license in Myrtle Beach, S.C., a few years ago, but hadn’t done much flying recently. His pilot’s license called for flying by visual flight rules only, which precluded legal flying at night.
“But Washington’s pretty lit up,” John Corder said. “You can’t get lost.”