Ralph Flores

Ralph V. Flores (October 24, 1921 – September 20, 1997) was a Mexican-born pilot from California who crashed his private plane in the wilds of Canada's Yukon Territory in February of 1963 while on a trip from Fairbanks, Alaska to California. He survived, along with his passenger Helen Klaben, for 49 days, subsisting mostly on melted snow. Flores, a new convert to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, told the Jewish Klaben that they would be rescued if she would read the New Testament. Soon after Klaben had supposedly finished the last page of the Book of Revelation, a passing pilot, a Mr. Hamilton, finally noticed the giant SOS that Flores had stamped into the snow of a nearby clearing.

His grandson, BJ Flores, is a cruiserweight professional boxer. Ralph had been a boxer in his native Mexico before he emigrated to the United States.

External links

* [http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?r103:E23SE3-43: Congressional Honor]
* [http://imdb.com/title/tt0073108/ "Hey, I'm Alive", film based on passenger Helen Klaben's book]
* [http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/movie.html?v_id=63238 Review of "Hey, I'm Alive"]
* [http://nl.newsbank.com/nl-search/we/Archives?p_product=BG&p_theme=bg&p_action=search&p_maxdocs=200&p_topdoc=1&p_text_direct-0=0EADDDD638EEFAE3&p_field_direct-0=document_id&p_perpage=10&p_sort=YMD_date:D&s_trackval=GooglePM Notice of death]