Captain Texted Wife ‘I Love You’ Before Plane Crashed in Giant Fireball. Now She Shares Her Love and Heartache

On the night before a UPS cargo plane tore through the sky over Louisville, Ky., raining fire and devastation and killing 14 people, Capt. Dana Diamond was at home in Caldwell, Texas, planting flowers with his wife, Donna. They hoped the new blooms would draw more butterflies to their 132-acre ranch.

“We did good. We’ve made a beautiful home,” Dana, 62, told Donna before leaving for work. He was scheduled to serve as the international relief officer on a McDonnell Douglas MD-11 headed to Hawaii on Tuesday, Nov. 4.

“We’ve got so much more to do,” he added.

The Diamonds had spent much of October improving the property. On Monday, Nov. 3, they walked the grounds together before Donna’s sister, Carol, arrived for a visit.

As Carol prepared to leave, she hugged and kissed Dana — then voiced a worry Donna says she’ll never forget.

“I worry about you, Dana, on those old airplanes,” Carol said. “I hate it when you fly. I worry about something happening.”

Dana tried to put her at ease.

“I’m just going to be riding in the back this time,” he said. “I’m going to be the ‘cook.’ “

“I’ll be home before y’all miss me,” he told them.

The following afternoon, UPS Flight 2976 was climbing out of Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport when its left engine and pylon separated from the wing and a fire broke out. The aircraft veered back toward the ground and exploded on impact, killing Dana, the other two crew members — Capt. Richard Wartenberg, 57, and First Officer Lee Truitt, 45 — and 11 people on the ground.

Donna was left widowed for the second time.

“I’ve done this before,” says the 63-year-old, whose previous husband, Johnny, died unexpectedly in 2015. She is retired from the construction company they started together. She also shares two children with her first husband, whom she divorced before marrying Johnny.

“I didn’t think I could ever love like I did before, but Dana is the one,” she says.

For decades, Dana poured his energy into flying and public service in his hometown of Bastrop, Texas. He joined UPS in 1988 and advanced through the ranks alongside Lee Collins, a fellow pilot.

For several years, Dana served as Collins’ deputy in the Independent Pilots Association (IPA). Together, they were known around the union as “Batman and Robin.”

“You never wanted to have either one of us in a meeting, because you might be in over your head,” says Collins, 65, who worked at UPS for 31 years and later became CEO of the National Flight Training Alliance. “We were a formidable team.”

Dana also served as commissioner and chief of Bastrop County Emergency Services District No. 1. Later, he trained aircraft rescue firefighters — including some of the first responders who arrived at the Louisville crash scene.

“He was a champion for safety,” says Capt. Jess Grigg, who brought Dana into the work when he chaired the Aircraft Rescue Fire Fighting (ARFF) committee of the IPA.

Jack Kreckie, a retired deputy fire chief who oversaw ARFF services at Boston Logan International Airport, says Dana’s instruction was “among the best aircraft training many of us have received.”

In all, Dana helped train more than 1,000 firefighters in that specialty.

‘He Just Filled Up Everything’

When Donna met Dana in 2015, she says her life shifted quickly.

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

She went on a date with him in 2010 — “my first and my last” — and they married within months. This October marked their 10th anniversary.

“We were inseparable,” she says. In their blended family, Dana became “Papaw” to their seven grandchildren.

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

Together they built the home they’d imagined, while Dana continued to travel for work. During long trips, Donna says he left her notes to find.

By October, Dana had spent nearly 25 years flying MD-11s and had become one of the fleet’s most senior pilots. In his last conversation with Collins in August, Dana spoke about retiring in 2026.

Donna still struggles with what she calls the bitter irony that Dana chose to bid for the Hawaii trip — one that was supposed to be quick.

On Tuesday, he texted with his 8-year-old granddaughter, Hayden, who shared her Christmas list and ended with a simple message: “I love you, Papaw.”

Donna says she and Dana also exchanged messages throughout the day. Then her son, Will, called while she was checking on one of their cows.

He asked if she’d heard about a UPS crash in Louisville — and whether she knew what type of aircraft Dana was scheduled to be on.

Donna rushed home. Will was waiting. She looked at the news anyway, despite his protests, and soon her fear was confirmed.

“Oh God, it’s him,” she remembers saying. “I got on the floor, just screaming.”

Later, as the family began trying to process the shock, Donna read one of Dana’s last texts to her — sent minutes before the crash:

“I love you, wife.”

Weeks later, questions remain as the NTSB continues investigating.

Collins describes the accident as “the perfect storm of events.” He believes that if the plane had only lost an engine, it might have remained flyable.

But, he says, the sequence that followed — losing the engine, a fire where it detached, contamination affecting the No. 2 engine and triggering a compressor stall and rollback — created a catastrophe.

“There was nothing that was going to save them after that second engine rolled back,” Collins says.

As he waits for the NTSB report, Collins says one shift troubles him: UPS went years without a deadly crash during his tenure, but that record changed in more recent years, he says.

“There have been three crashes, all of which were fatal, seven crew members killed and 11 people on the ground,” Collins says, referencing the three deadly UPS plane crashes that have occurred since 2010, as reported by USA Today.

In a statement last month, UPS said it “continue[s] to grieve for the lives lost in the tragic accident involving Flight 2976” and noted it had “proactively grounded its MD-11 fleet out of an abundance of caution.”

“We appreciate the National Transportation Safety Board’s prompt release of preliminary findings and will fully support the investigation through its conclusion,” UPS said.

For Collins, honoring Dana means carrying forward the safety culture Dana fought to strengthen.

“Dana was very much a formidable person and captain in that he believed in doing things one way — and that was the right way, the safe way,” Collins says. “There were no shortcuts. There were no excuses, because we all know our world can have deadly consequences. The goal is to keep that from ever happening.”

For Donna, preserving Dana’s legacy now feels essential — even as she clings to the small moments he left behind.

Months before he died, he tucked away a note for her to find during one of his trips. A few words meant to steady her when the house felt too quiet:

“You are the best part of me.”