Almost 50 years ago, lay missioner John Gauker died with Maryknoll Father Bill Woods in a suspicious plane crash in the Guatemalan jungle.

In 1976, a powerful earthquake struck Guatemala, destroying more than 250,000 houses and leaving 1.2 million people homeless.

In Auburn, Alabama, John Gauker and his wife, Phyllis, wanted to help. John owned a construction company and felt a call to help with reconstruction. 

They knew Spanish from having lived in Spain for three years. Phyllis was two months pregnant, and they had a 2 ½ year-old son, Johnny. 

At their parish, a retired engineer had served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Guatemala. He said he had worked with a priest pilot there who, if they wrote him, might tell them, “Come on down.”

So they did, and Maryknoll Father William “Bill” Woods did tell them to come. 

Father Woods told them the plan was to build apartments for earthquake-displaced people on land he had purchased in Guatemala City for that purpose. He said he was waiting for the contractor to show up. John Gauker was that contractor.

Phyllis Gauker and son Johnny are shown with baby Monica after her baptism, which was officiated by Maryknoll Father William Woods at the plane hangar in Guatemala City. (Courtesy of Phyllis Gauker/Guatemala)

For more than a decade, Father Woods had been involved in a land reform project in a remote jungle area called the Ixcán. The project had secured land for landless, Indigenous Mayan campesinos and helped them to build homes and farms. By 1976, about 2,000 Mayan families had been settled in five new towns, complete with schools and health clinics.

But Guatemala’s military and land-owning elite also had their eyes on this jungle area. The rise in oil prices in the 1970s was attracting foreign oil companies. The army was increasingly active in the area, and had begun kidnapping, disappearing and killing people associated with the land reform project.

In April 1976, the U.S. ambassador told Father Woods in a private meeting that the Guatemalan military were accusing him of collaborating with guerrillas and that his life was in danger.

Following the meeting, Father Woods sent a letter directly to Guatemala’s then-president, General Kjell Laugerud García, stating, “I have never had any relationship with the guerrillas, and I have no political ideals.” He continued, “My only interest is to help make the peasants better Christians, better Guatemalans, and thus help them produce more for themselves and for their country.”

After they arrived in Guatemala, Father Woods told the Gaukers about this threat to his life. “We really didn’t know what to do,” says Phyllis. “I think he was offering us a way out, as in, ‘If you want to leave now, I’ll understand.’”

She and John thought and prayed about it. “We decided we were in for the long haul and would not abandon Bill.”

The couple moved into an airplane hangar that Father Woods had leased. He had learned to fly in 1965 and used planes to transport people and supplies for the Ixcán project.

The official Maryknoll lay mission program had been launched and Father Woods talked to the couple about attending the orientation and formation program at Maryknoll in Ossining, New York, but that did not happen.

Shortly after the birth of the Gaukers’ daughter, Monica, Father Woods invited the whole family to fly with him to the Ixcán to see the project there. They were to fly on Nov. 20, 1976.

Maryknoll Father William Woods distributes deeds for land in the Ixcán jungle where he helped 2,000 families settle. The photographer of this photo was killed with John Gauker and Father Woods in the plane crash. (Selwyn Puig/Maryknoll Mission Archives/Guatemala)

On another recent trip, Phyllis recounts, “We had had a trying experience with Moni” because of the heat and humidity. “Therefore I knew she could not tolerate the heat in the Ixcán, so I declined for me and the children.” Phyllis recalls that as she closed the door to the plane, “my son was still crying to go with his daddy.”

Besides John, three other passengers were on board. At 20 years old, Ann Kerndt, of the U.S.-based Direct Relief Foundation, was the youngest. Accompanying her was Michael Okada, a medical doctor volunteering in Guatemala. Selwyn Puig, a photographer familiar with Father Woods’ work and a mother of four, was to take pictures for Maryknoll magazine.

Phyllis recalls: “That afternoon at sunset, I called on the ham radio in the hangar to Mayalán, asking for Bill. The answer was, “El padre no ha llegado (Father has not arrived).”

In their book Murdered in Central America: The Stories of Eleven U.S. Missionaries, Donna Whitson Brett and Edward T. Brett wrote about the plane: “The Cessna, after weighing in to assure that it was not overloaded, took off at 10:01 a.m. Just as it cleared the last ridge through the canyon leading into the jungle, when the aircraft was only about 150 feet above the ridge, witnesses saw the plane begin to plummet towards the earth, then twist around and smash into the mountain it had just cleared.”

Although witnesses testified that the weather was perfectly clear that day, the Guatemalan army tried to blame bad weather for the crash. The military arrived at the site very soon afterward, removed the bodies and tampered with the evidence. Phyllis remembers a colonel from the Guatemalan army coming to the hangar to tell her the bad news: “The plane had been found and all were dead. As if in explanation for the cause of the crash, he showed me weather reports (which clearly showed clear skies!). Did he think I could not read?”

At a memorial Mass in Guatemala City, Phyllis Gauker looks on as a Canadian missionary priest holds Johnny and Maryknoll Brother Robert Butsch addresses the construction workers gathered to attend the service for John. (Courtesy of Phyllis Gauker/Guatemala)

Today, it is generally accepted that Father Woods, John and the three other passengers on that fateful flight were murdered by order of the Guatemalan military. There have been reports of officers who were overheard drunkenly boasting that they had killed the missionary priest.

Father Woods’ and John’s names are the first in a long list of Catholic priests, religious, lay catechists, lay missioners and even a bishop who were assassinated and martyred in Guatemala between 1976 and 1998.

Not long after the crash, the Guatemalan army occupied the Ixcán settlements, a European oil conglomerate built roads through the area, and a highway was built to connect to the newly acquired lands of Guatemala’s next president.

Then, according to the Bretts, in March 1982, “over 300 people were murdered by the army at La Unión, one of Father Woods’ pueblos. Similar massacres were carried out by the military throughout the Ixcán project from March to June.”

According to the United Nations Historical Clarification Commission for Guatemala, more than 200,000 people were killed or disappeared in the decades-long civil war.

In 2006 Phyllis sent a letter to Thomas R. Melville, a former Maryknoll priest who wrote Through a Glass Darkly (a chronicle of atrocities in Guatemala and El Salvador, told through the eyes of Maryknoll Father Ronald Hennessey). She wrote of her late husband and Father Woods, “I didn’t know if I should consider them martyrs or fools.”

Father Woods and John were buried in the Maryknoll section of the cemetery in Huehuetenango, Guatemala. In 2000, at the request of the Ixcán people, Father Woods’ body was moved to Mayalán, Ixcán.

Maryknoll Father Edward Moore walks in procession during the funeral Mass for the plane crash victims. Father Woods’ brother is seated at right. (Courtesy of Phyllis Gauker/Guatemala)

Phyllis Gauker returned with her two children to Auburn, where she eventually remarried. She has taught choral music and directed the Auburn Music Club Singers. “Music, specifically singing,” she says, “has been what held me together.”

A longer version of this article can be found with the title “Martyrs or fools?” at mklm.org.

Featured image: Left to right: John Gauker delights in his children, Monica and Johnny; Phyllis is embraced by a woman who whispers, “I am a widow, too;” a photo shows the Gaukers and Maryknoll Father William Woods on the day of Monica’s baptism; construction workers attend a Mass for John. (Courtesy of Phyllis Gauker/Guatemala)