Before the plane crashed in a giant fireball, the captain wrote ‘I love you’ to his wife. Now she shares her love and heartache (Exclusive)

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

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

• Minutes before the fatal crash, he texted his wife

The night before the crash, a UPS cargo plane rained fire and destruction on a section of Louisville, Ky. – Death of 14 – Captain Dana Diamond, along with his wife, Donna, planted flowers on their 132-acre farm in Caldwell, Texas, to encourage more butterflies to fly.

“We did well. We built a beautiful house,” Dana, 62, told his wife on Tuesday, Nov. 4, before leaving to serve as an international relief officer on a McDonnell Douglas MD-11 jet bound for Hawaii.

“We have a lot to do,” Dana said.

The Diamonds had spent most of October together since their home was built a year and a half ago. That Monday, November 3, they toured the grounds before Donna’s sister, Carol, arrived.

At the end of Carol’s visit, she gets up to leave Dana with a hug and a kiss.

“I worry about you, Dana, on those old airplanes,” Carol told her brother-in-law, Donna recalled in an interview with PEOPLE, her first since her husband’s death. “I hate it when you fly. I worry that something is going on.”

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

“I’ll be home before you miss 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 wing caught fire.

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

Donna was widowed for the second time in her life.

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

“I never thought I could love like I did before, but Dana is the one,” says Donna.

For decades, Dana’s focus was on her career and giving back to her hometown of Bastrop, Texas. He joined UPS in 1988 and soared with fellow pilot Lee Collins.

For a few 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 didn’t want to put one of us in a meeting,” says Collins, 65, who worked at UPS for 31 years before becoming CEO of the National Flight Training Alliance. “We were a strong 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 Capt. Jess Grigg, who brought Dana on when he was chairman of the IPA’s Aircraft Rescue Firefighting (ARFF) committee. Jack Crekey, a retired deputy fire chief who oversees ARFF services at Boston Logan International Airport, says the training he received from Dana was “some of the best flight training most of us have ever had.” In total, Dana helped train more than 1,000 firefighters in that specialty.

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

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

She went on a date with Dana in 2010 – her first and her last with him: they married within months. This October marked their 10th anniversary.

“We were inseparable,” says Donna, of the halcyon days of their marriage. Dana soon became known as “Papa” to his seven grandchildren.

“I loved that my dream was her dream,” she adds.

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

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

Donna is still struggling with the bitter irony that her husband decided to bid on a trip to Hawaii, which should be quick.

That Tuesday, Dana texted her 8-year-old grandson Hayden, who shared her Christmas list and a sweet note: “I love you, Papa.” Donna also chatted with Dana several times that day. Examining one of his cows changed the course of the day. His son, Will, called to ask if he had heard about the UPS plane crash in Louisville. Did she know what kind of plane Dana was scheduled to board?

Running home, Donna finds Will waiting for her and watches the news despite his protests. His nightmare was soon confirmed: Dana’s plane had gone down.

“Oh my God, it’s him,” Donna recalls. “I hit the floor, just screaming.”

It wasn’t until later that day — when she and her family were navigating a tsunami of grief and trauma — that Donna read one of the last messages Dana sent her, minutes before the crash: “I love you, wife.”

In the weeks that followed, local communities and people around the country mourned collectively. Unanswered questions also remain as the NTSB continues its lengthy investigation.

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

He says that if the plane had just lost an engine, “that airplane would have flown fine.” “But losing an engine, catching fire on the wing where the engine came off, and then getting contaminated … and knocking out the compressor on the number two engine, and then rolling back,” Collins continues. “You can’t really imagine that scenario.”

He adds, “There was nothing to save them after the second engine came back.”

As he awaits the NTSB report, Collins says he’s concerned about the change in statistics. During his tenure at UPS, the company had no fatal accidents, but in the last 15 years, that has changed, he says.

“There have been three crashes, all of them fatal, with seven crew members killed, and 11 people on the ground,” Collins says, referring to the three fatal UPS plane crashes since 2010. USA Today.

As he mourns his friend and former colleague, Collins says the best way to honor Dana is to train pilots with a focus on safety — a priority Dana fought for every day.

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“Dana was such a powerful person and captain that 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 our world can have deadly consequences. The goal is to never let that happen.”

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

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

Read the original article on People