The wife of a Tennessee man who was killed in a plane crash Monday said even though they had been married since 1990, it was as though they were newlyweds.

“We’ve been on our honeymoon since we married, and we were extremely happy,” said Beverly Dickey. “He was a good, Christian man — there were so many wonderful things about him. If I had just put my foot down and made him stay home ... but he was his own man.”

Ronald Dickey, 59, of Williston, Tenn., crashed here Monday in the plane he and his wife built in their garage.

The plane appeared to have been sputtering before the engine revved mightily before it crashed, witnesses said.

The fatal crash was called in via numerous 911 calls starting about 1:27 p.m., Police Chief Rex Eskridge said.

Listen to the flurry of 911 calls as concerned citizens call in to report the crash of a small airplane in a Muskogee neighborhood.

Watch video below of the site just moments after emergency workers and investigators arrive on the scene.

Several witnesses said it appeared Dickey tried to miss nearby buildings. His two-seater RV-6A kit plane nosed down into a huge, empty lot across from Pleasant Valley Nursing Home apartments in the 900 block of Indiana Street.

“That’s him — that’s the way he was,” Beverly Dickey said upon hearing what witnesses said of it appearing he was trying to avoid hitting anything or anyone.

Dickey became a mechanical engineer after serving two tours in Vietnam. He brought home the Medal of Honor and lots of problems the VA helped him work through, his wife, Beverly, said Monday.

She said she gave up her garage for a year while she and her husband built the plane. It took him 3 1/2 months to train as a pilot and pass his test, she said.

“Flying was his passion,” she said.

Map of the area where the crash occured.

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Pilot's intended route to Amarillo.

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At first, Beverly Dickey was in denial that the dead pilot could be her husband. But officials told her his identification was in his billfold and in the plane’s log book, which officials said appeared to be more intact than anything on the plane.

The marriage between Beverly and Ronald DIckey was the second marriage for both. Dickey had been to the couple’s Tennessee home for the weekend. He and two of the boys had worked on the youngest boy’s motorcycle, she said.

“We all had a wonderful weekend,” she said.

Motorcycles were something the entire family enjoyed, she said. She and her husband had driven them for years.

She recalled her husband liked to “go fast.”

Ronald Dickey was commuting Monday from Tennessee to his job as a project engineer for Conoco-Phillips in Borger, Texas, his wife said. He flew out of Fayette County Airport, 38 miles east of Memphis.

The plane’s log showed the plane had 500 flight hours on it, officials at the scene said.

Police put colored flags all over the area where debris from the plane could be found Monday. The National Transportation Safety Board gave the FAA authority to handle the crash site to determine the cause of the crash, said Police Capt. Scott Shields.

The body was removed from the site late Monday afternoon and taken to the Oklahoma Medical Examiner’s Office in Tulsa, Shields said.

Ronald Dickey was raised in Arkansas but born in Forth Worth, Texas, his wife said.

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