Chalk's pilot's husband sets up foundation
BY DARRAN SIMON
dsimon@MiamiHerald.com
Mark Marks last talked to his wife, pilot Michele Marks, on Dec. 18 when they rose before sunrise and he made her coffee. He told her he loved her, and to fly safe.
He found out she died when he saw the report Dec. 19 on TV that a Chalk's Ocean Airways seaplane had crashed off Miami Beach.
The couple's memories always seemed to come on the water's edge.
They met on a nine-day shark behavior ecology course in a South Africa fishing town. He asked her to marry him on the 10th day. Michele became Mrs. Marks on the San Diego coast.
''Everywhere I walk I see her. I smell her,'' Mark Marks told reporters Saturday at their Boynton Beach home. ``She was my soul mate, my best friend and my wife.''
Marks, 42, a renowned zoologist and research biologist who works with white sharks, said his wife of more than seven years loved wildlife and the ocean. He plans to start the Michele Lynn Marks Marine Conservation Foundation to give scholarships to college students for marine research.
The right wing of Chalk's Flight 101 separated from the fuselage in the crash. The seaplane plummeted into the water near the Government Cut jetty off Miami Beach. It had just left Watson Island, heading to Bimini. The 18 passengers and 2 pilots on board were all killed.
The cause of the crash is not expected for some time. But the Federal Aviation Administration issued a bulletin Friday saying it may now require mandatory inspection of all seaplanes. The bulletin said an FAA preliminary investigation showed stress fractures in the 58-year-old Grumman G-73 Turbine Mallard seaplane's right wing support that could have played a role in the crash.
Chalk's voluntarily grounded its four other G-73 aircrafts after the National Transportation Safety Board discovered the fractures.
Mark Marks said he didn't know much about the investigation but has to be patient.
''I really want to know what happened, for her, her co-pilot, the families of the other 15 passengers and three children that died,'' he said. ``I don't know how to honor her better than to find out the truth.''
Michele Marks, 37, loved seaplanes and worked for Chalk's about three years, flying twin-engine Grumman G-73T Mallards.
Chalk's promoted Marks, who had an unblemished flying record, according to the FAA, from first officer to captain this year.
Her husband wore her white gold wedding band with a green emerald around his neck.
The ring was one of the few items he has received from the medical examiner.
``I don't know how I am going to do this without her.''
He sobbed while talking and held a photo of his wife wearing a pilot's uniform.
''This is the single-most difficult thing I ever went through,'' he said.
Marks was teaching the shark behavior ecology course in 1998 when he met his wife. She was a few inches taller and attractive, he recalled. ''Oh man, I'm in trouble,'' he remembered saying when he first saw her.
They married on Sept. 23, 1998 -- her birthday.
She tempered him. He was loud, she was less confrontational. She wasn't the cook or the domesticated one. In fact, she just learned to boil spaghetti. She usually left a trail a clothes on the floor on her way to the shower.
She was the adventurer -- hiking mountains, swiming with white sharks in South Africa.
''She was fearless. She was absolutely fearless,'' her husband said.
He introduced her to hiking. They spent three months hiking across the country on their honeymoon. She was teaching him how to sail.
''I've lost my teacher as well,'' he said. She helped steer the Chondros, a 38-foot Irwin he owned from Naples to South Florida. The Chondros -- Latin for ''cartilaginous fish'' -- is docked at the couple's Boyton Beach complex.
The family held a service for her on Friday. Chalk's employees, mechanics, customs agents, and others from Bimini and passengers who flew with Marks showed up.
''I just feel so lonely without her,'' he said. ``She'll never come home, but I want her to come home so bad.''
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