Ed Rendell was invited to fly on the chartered plane that went down killing 7 Saturday

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/06/01/ed-rendell-i-could-have-been-on-inquirer-owner-lewis-katz-s-crashed-jet.html

The last time Ed Rendell saw his close friend Lewis Katz—who was killed Saturday night in a plane crash—was on Friday and completely by chance. Katz, the Philadelphia tycoon, former sports team owner, and philanthropist who had just purchased the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News, had been trying for days to persuade former governor Rendell to fly up with him on Saturday to Concord, Mass., for a cocktail party and dinner at the home of historian Doris Kearns Goodwin.


“I stopped to get some produce at a place on 20th Street, and Lewis was sitting in an outdoor seating area at a restaurant across the way,” Rendell, 70, told The Daily Beast on Sunday afternoon, a few hours after he learned that his friend had been killed the previous evening, along with six other people, in the fiery explosion of his chartered jet. “We joked and kibitzed, and Lewis said, ‘You really ought to come tomorrow. Doris would love to see you.’ And I said, ‘Listen, I’ll call you, but I don’t think I can.’”


Rendell, who served as Philadelphia’s district attorney and mayor before being elected Pennsylvania governor in 2002, explained that he had an early morning speaking commitment at the Little Shul in south Philadelphia and was worried he wouldn’t be back in time. It was a fundraising event for the renovation of the state’s smallest synagogue, which is situated in a row house, “and I couldn’t let them down,” Rendell said.


Had it not been for the fundraiser, Rendell said he would have been aboard the jet and killed along with the 72-year-old Katz, three other passengers, and three crew members, when it crashed on the runway and reportedly hit a fence and exploded at Hanscom Field, a small airport outside Boston, on its way to Atlantic City, N.J."