ST. GEORGE, Utah — A family in St. George is remembering a man they say was a great father, husband and teacher, and who soared as a guiding eagle before he perished in a plane crash last Friday.
“He gave me a kiss, he said goodbye, I said 'Have a good day,' he took our youngest to school, and then he took off,” Michael Cox’s wife Amanda said. ”And that was the last time I talked to him. It's what it needed to be that day. I couldn't have asked for a better morning.”
Piloting his Cirrus SR 22 last Friday, Michael was taking friend Mark Johnson on a trip up to Provo. Their plane dived into Utah Lake just short of the runway, ending their lives last Friday in a crash still under investigation.
“My brother-in-law called and just said, ‘Mike has been in a plane accident. The parachute was deployed. We do not know the outcome,’” Amanda said.
As a compromise for his passion of flying when he got his pilot’s license two years ago, Michael said he would have a plane with a parachute. Also comforting Amanda was that Michael exceeded the required 40 hours of training to get a license.
“He was closer to 100 hours before he got his license. So I knew he had that experience. That was reassuring. I wasn't worried," Amanda said.
Amanda and Michael met when both went to separate high schools in Las Vegas. A friendship grew into a best friendship, and eventually a marriage with two sons and two daughters.
Their oldest son had just started his Latter-day Saint mission in Houston and is coming back for the funeral.
Family and friends say Michael's forte was being a teacher.
“The day before the accident, he and I went to the airport together and we got to help teach like a homeschool group about aviation, and it was fun to see him in that setting,” said Ben Cox, Michael’s nephew, who he trained to fly and earn a pilot’s license of his own. “One of the most valuable things he taught me was just to enjoy life, enjoy the little things, enjoy learning, and just pursue knowledge. To be like Mike, learn like Mike, to live like Mike, to love like Mike, to serve like Mike served."
Michael's older brother Ray remembers seeing good qualities as soon as he was born.
“I saw attributes in Mike when he was a kid that he made a room better — he made life better,” he said.
Using a term from their LDS faith, Bill Cox called his older brother a “covenant maker and a covenant keeper.”
“He loved sharing his hobbies with people that thought different than him and looked different than him. That didn't matter to him,” Bill said of Michael. “People were just people to him, and he just lived his life.”
Bill added that his older brother was a kindred spirit with Mark Johnson, of Washington City. Like Michael and Amanda, the Johnsons were transplants from Las Vegas.
“Every positive thing I can say about Michael being like a great father, a great husband and a sincerely great man, I have heard the same about Mark," he said.
Amanda said every weekend, her husband loved to share his love and passion for flying with friends and neighbors, heading to the airport almost every Saturday to take people on flights over the Grand Canyon or Zion National Park.
“It actually went back to when my father-in-law passed away in 2020, and my husband said, ‘I'm not getting any younger. I want to pursue this. I want to get my private pilot's license,’” Amanda said. “I was the good wife and loved and supported him and said, ‘OK, here we go on another adventure.’”
She said he took each of their kids on special trips, including a daddy-daughter trip to Knott’s Berry Farm.
Amanda said she was more selective of when she would go flying with her husband — it had to be somewhere she wanted to go.
One of those times was last Tuesday, as the two flew up to Manti to go to the LDS temple there. Amanda said she met up with some of her grandmother’s family and they promised to come back down to St. George last weekend for a family reunion.
Then the crash happened on Friday.
“I had to decide Friday night whether to stick with it or not, and I said, ‘I absolutely want to stick with it. There's nothing I want more than just the support of family,’” she said. “So we did keep to the family reunion, everybody came to my house and it was a wonderful experience to just have so much love and support from my side of the family.”
Those who flew with Michael said he used the Red Cliffs Temple to guide him home to St. George Airport. Now, family and friends say his legacy will guide them from here.
