Captain Texts Wife ‘I Love You’ Before Plane Crashes In Giant Fireball. Now She Shares Her Love and Heartache (Exclusive)

YOU NEED TO KNOW

• More than a month after Capt. Dana Diamond died in a UPS cargo plane crash in Louisville, Ky., his widow is remembering their last moments together

• Diamond worked at UPS for 37 years as a pilot and previously served as commissioner and fire chief of his local fire department in Texas.

• Minutes before the fatal crash, he sent a text to his wife

The night before a UPS cargo plane crashes rains fire and devastation across a stretch of Louisville, Ky. – killing 14 – Captain Dana Diamond planted flowers with his wife, Donna, to encourage more butterflies to bloom along their 132-acre ranch in Caldwell, Texas.

“We did well. We made a beautiful home,” Dana, 62, told his wife before he left to serve as the international aid officer on the McDonnell Douglas MD-11 jet that was going to Hawaii on Tuesday, November 4.

“We have a lot more to do,” Dana said.

The Diamonds had spent most of October together, making improvements to the property on which their house had been built only a year and a half before. That Monday, November 3, they toured the grounds before Donna’s sister, Carol, arrived.

At the end of Carol’s visit, she got up to leave, hugging and kissing Dana.

“I worry about you, Dana, on those old planes,” Carol said to her brother, Donna recalls in an interview with PEOPLE, the first time since her husband died. “I hate it when you fly. I worry about something happening.”

The longtime pilot quickly reassured Carol. “I’m going to ride in the back this time,” said Dana, according to his wife. “I’ll be the ‘chef.'”

“I’ll be home before you touch me,” he told them both.

The next afternoon, UPS Flight 2976 was taking off at Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport when its left engine and pylon separated from the wing as a fire broke out.

The plane careened back toward the ground and crashed in a massive explosion, killing Dana, the other two crew members on board — Captain Richard Wartenberg, 57, and First Officer Lee Truitt, 45 — and 11 bystanders in the area, PEOPLE previously reported.

Donna became a widow for the second time in her life.

“I’ve done this before,” says the 63-year-old whose previous husband, Johnny, died suddenly in 2015. (She also shares two children with her first husband, whom she divorced before marrying Johnny.)

“I didn’t think I could ever love like I did before, but Dana is the one,” says Donna.

For decades, Dana’s focus has been on his career and giving back to his hometown of Bastrop, Texas. He joined UPS in 1988 and rose through the ranks with fellow pilot Lee Collins.

For some years Dana served as Collins’ deputy in the Independent Pilots Association (IPA), and together they became known as the “Batman and Robin” of the union.

“You never wanted to have any of us in a meeting, because you might be in over your head,” says Collins, 65, who worked at UPS for 31 years before becoming CEO of the National Flight Training Alliance. “We were a formidable team.”

Dana also served as commissioner and chief of Bastrop County Emergency Services District No. 1, and later trained aircraft rescue firefighters – some of whom were first responders to the scene in Louisville.

“He was a champion for safety,” says Captain Jess Grigg, who introduced Dana when he was chairman of the IPA’s Aircraft Rescue Firefighting (ARFF) committee. Jack Kreckie, a retired deputy fire chief who oversaw ARFF services at Boston Logan International Airport, says the training he received from Dana was “among the best airplane training most of us have received.” In total, Dana has helped train more than 1,000 firefighters in that specialty.

When Dana met Donna in 2015, their worlds quickly expanded.

“I’m lost and broken, I tell you,” says Donna. “Then I met Dana, and he just filled everything inside of me.”

She went on a date with Dana in 2010 – her first and last with him: They were married within a matter of months. In October, October commemorated their 10th anniversary.

“We were inseparable,” Donna says of the halcyon days of their marriage. Dana quickly became known as “Papaw” to their now seven grandchildren.

“He loved that my dream was his dream,” she adds.

Together, the couple built their dream property. In between long stretches of time at home in Caldwell, Dana continued to travel around the world for work, leaving sweet notes for Donna to find in his absence.

As of October, the pilot had spent nearly 25 years flying MD-11s, and was the most senior pilot of that type of fleet for UPS. In his last conversation with Collins in August, Dana talked about his plans to retire in 2026.

Donna still struggles with the bitter irony that her husband decided to offer for the trip to Hawaii, which was supposed to be quick.

That Tuesday, Dana texted his 8-year-old grandson, Hayden, who shared her Christmas list and a sweet note: “I love you, Papaw.” Donna also communicated with Dana several times that day. The mandate of the day changed when she was checking one of their cows. Her son, Will, called to ask if she had heard about the UPS plane crash in Louisville. Did she know what kind of plane Dana was scheduled to be on?

Leaving the house, Donna found Will waiting for her and watched the news, despite his protests. Her nightmare was soon confirmed: Dana’s plane had gone down.

“Oh God, it is,” Donna remembers saying. “I fell on the ground, just screamed.”

It wasn’t until later that day — as she and her family navigated the tsunami of grief and shock — that Donna read one of the last messages Dana sent her, minutes before the crash: “I love you, woman.”

In the weeks that followed, the local community and people across the nation mourned collectively. Unanswered questions also remain as the NTSB continues its lengthy investigation.

Collins describes the crash as “the perfect storm of events.”

He says that if the plane had just lost an engine, “that plane would have flown well.” “But you lose an engine, it lands on that wing where the engine left, and then it contaminates… the number two engine and causes the compressor to stop, and then roll back,” Collins continues. “You can’t really foresee that scenario.”

He adds, “There was nothing that was going to save them after that second engine went back.”

As he awaits the NTSB report, Collins says he is alarmed by a change in statistics. For many years during his tenure at UPS, the company had no fatal crashes, but in the last 15 years, that has changed, he says.

“There were three crashes, all of which were fatal, seven crew members died, and 11 people on the ground,” says Collins, referring to the three fatal UPS crashes since 2010, as reported by USA Today.

As he mourns his friend and former colleague, Collins says the best way to honor Dana is by training pilots with an emphasis on safety — a priority Dana fights for every day.

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“Dana was a very formidable person and captain because he believed in doing things one way, and that was the right way, the safe way,” says Collins. “There were no shortcuts. There were no excuses because we all know that our world can have fatal consequences. The goal is that this never happens.”

Sharing Dana’s impact on the aviation community is important to Donna, even as she holds his memories close.

“Dear woman, I love you,” Dana wrote months ago in a note he left for Donna to find, hoping to ease the pain of his absence. “You are the best part of me.”

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