Last Goodbye to Dewees Crash Victims

Shem Creek was a place dear in the hearts of Carly Donohue and Lucas Smith, the pair killed a week ago when the light sport aircraft they were operating fell from the sky off the coast of Dewees Island.

On Wednesday, at the same time the crash occurred a week earlier, friends and relatives of both Donohue and Smith gathered to pay final respects at Red’s Ice House on the banks of the creek.

Read more about the Dewees Island crash.

Funerals were held earlier, so the Wednesday memorial was more indicative of the type of event Donohue and Smith would have enjoyed attending.

“Carly wouldn’t want people to be sad,” said Debbie Eye, Donohue’s mother. “This is not as serious as a funeral. This is a celebration."

Smith would feel the same way, friends said.

“I know he’s up there looking at us with a big grin on his face,” said Ric Biggers. “Lucas was the first person I met when I moved here 15 years ago. He was an unbelievable person. You were always in a good mood when you were around him.”

Cocktails and beers in hand, the friends were just across the shore from the small office out of which Donohue and Smith ran the Osprey, a motoryacht Smith restored and chartered for private events.

Donohue, 27, majored in marketing in college and loved the water. Combining the two in her work with Smith was a perfect fit, according to her father.

“I used to joke with her, asking when she was going to get a real job,” said Jim Donohue, who resides in Louisville, Ky. “But the boat was a perfect fit. She wanted to know everything about it.”

She often called her family to tell them about the long hours she spent working on the Osprey, but she never complained. She loved being on the water and she chased adventure.

Smith and Donohue had been working in the days before their death with a film crew that was documenting wildlife on Lowcountry barrier islands. They were taking photos in the “flying boat” the day they died.

“Lucas was always doing something. He never sat still,” said Bret Hammans, one of Smith’s friends. “Like a flying boat or restoring an old yacht he bought off eBay. He was always up to something.”

Smith, 40, married with a son and daughter, also operated a chain of successful dry-cleaning businesses.

Donohue, who moved to the Charleston area from Kentucky to be closer to her sister, worked for a year aboard a yacht that sailed all over Florida and the Caribbean. She’d only been in Mount Pleasant two years, but she had made great friends.

“It was so uplifting to hear all the things people had to say about Carly,” said Eye, who estimated several hundred people attended Donohue’s funeral. “You couldn’t meet her and forget her.”

Two Korean tourists, who sailed on the Osprey just two weeks before the crash, made a point to attend the funeral, because they liked Donohue so much.

“That’s the kind of impression she made on people,” said step-mom Debi Donohue.

On Wednesday, there were plenty of stories and laughs about Donohue and Smith, but there are lingering sadness and questions.

Her father, who initially had concerns about the light sport aircraft, wonders if he should have more clearly stated his reservations.

“She probably would have gone up anyway and told me she didn’t,” Donohue said with a smile.

Instead of protesting, he planned go up with his daughter next time he visited.

And friends want to know how the crash happened.

At Wednesday’s event, everyone said they believe Smith was as skilled in the aircraft as he was in a ship captain’s chair. There must have been something wrong with the aircraft, they say.

The National Transportation Safety Board is currently reviewing a Federal Aviation Administration inspection of the crash scene. Findings could be available in a week or two.

Between now and then, Donohue’s family plans to continue to celebrate her life. They’ll hold another memorial in Louisville so her friends there can gather to say goodbye.

“This is Carly’s night,” said step-father Jack Eye. “And when we go back, it will be Carly’s month.”