Near the end of a six-month multi-country trip abroad for the Point Four program, a plane carrying Dr. Henry Bennett and his wife Vera, along with 14 other passengers and a crew of five, crashed during bad weather in mountainous terrain (pictured) near Tehran, Iran, killing everyone on board.

As head of the Point Four program for the Truman Administration, Bennett had begun an aggressive outreach program that involved 236 trainees from 34 countries, each would return to their homeland and use the technical knowledge they had gained to better feed, clothe and shelter their people.

As Bennett put it before his last trip abroad: "Let us use our power not to conquer or dominate men and nations, but to free them."

The Iranian government showed its respects to Bennett by establishing a formal memorial at the site, click on photo to enlarge and click on arrows for additional photos of the site.

This series of photos includes one of the last taken of President Bennett and Vera before their trip to the Middle East. Pictured sitting in their home, Mrs. Bennett is shown holding a memento from an earlier trip that she and Dr. Bennett took to South America.