Roy Halladay's wife initially 'fought hard' against buying plane in deadly crash
After the tragic death of ex-MLB star Roy Halladay on Tuesday in a single-passenger plane crash off the coast of Florida, a one-month-old video featuring Halladay and his wife Brandy seems particularly heartbreaking.
The Halladays were featured in a promo video for the small plane Halladay was flying — the ICON A5 — and in the video Brandy talks about being against Roy’s desire to buy the plane but ultimately changing her mind. Here’s the exchange in the video:
“I didn’t grow up with airplanes,” Brandy Halladay said. “Or a comfort level like he did in small airplanes.”
“She’s fought me the whole way,” Roy said.
“Hard. I fought hard,” Brandy said. “I was very against it.”
Brandy then talks about taking a ride in the plane with Roy and said she changed her mind: “I get it, I get it,” she said. “This is amazing … Now that we’re going to have one I’m really excited.”
We don’t yet know the details of the fatal crash that took Halladay’s life at just 40 years old. There wasn’t a mayday call, according to the Pasco County Sheriff’s Office. A full investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board is pending.
[Tim Brown: Halladay’s wife, sons mourn death of their greatest hero]
As Brandy said, Halladay was always very comfortable around planes. His father was a commercial pilot, so Roy spent plenty of time around them. In the video for the A5, Halladay explained his love for flying.
“I grew up around airplanes and always wanted to get my license. But it didn’t happen,” Halladay said. “I ended up playing baseball, so it wasn’t one of the things I was allowed to do. I just couldn’t be a licensed pilot on my own. When I retired, that was one of the first things I wanted to do.”
Halladay retired from MLB in 2013 and got his pilot’s license the next April. Since then, he often posted about flying on his Twitter account. In 2016, he posted about a dog-rescue flight he made. Last month, he got the first of ICON’s A5 series planes.
In a statement about Halladay and the accident, ICON said:
“We were devastated to learn that former MLB pitcher Roy Halladay died today in an accident involving an ICON A5 in the Gulf of Mexico. ICON will do everything it can to support the accident investigation going forward and we will comment further when more information is available.”
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Mike Oz is the editor of Big League Stew on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at mikeozstew@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter! Follow @MikeOz
More Roy Halladay coverage from Yahoo Sports:
• Baseball world reacts to Halladay’s tragic death
• Sports world rocked again by plane crash death
• 5 moments that made us love Roy Halladay
• Halladay’s plane, the Icon A5, was a ‘Jet Ski with wings’
