The sound of sirens filled the snowy night as the horror of the crash spread quickly through the city.

When a twin-engine seaplane plunged into the trees of Wallace Lake on a Sunday evening 50 years ago today, it took six of Shreveport's most prominent leaders down with it. The names could have been on the list of honorees for a Chamber of Commerce banquet: Querbes, Hargrove, Weiss, Atkins, Evans.

Two pilots and ten passengers were on the plane. None survived.

Ice on the wings took down the Grumman Mallard, and when those twin engines stopped at 5:45 p.m. on Jan. 10, 1954, so did the heartbeat of the city. Not since the Yellow Fever epidemic of the 1870s had Shreveport suffered such a sudden loss of community leadership.

"It was an enormous human tragedy for Shreveport. It cast a pall over the community because there were so many people and the names were real well-known," said Jim Gardner, who was elected mayor of the city later that year.

"They were top-drawer people. You don't lose that many outstanding citizens without it having an impact."

The measure of that impact is something of a topic for debate, with plenty of emotion woven through, but there's no doubt the entire city paused for at least a moment to deal with its loss. The victims had been active leaders in the Chamber of Commerce, Community Chest fund-raising campaign, Louisiana State Fair, Centenary College, the American Red Cross, Better Business Bureau, the YMCA, the symphony, theater, opera and more. They represented Protestant, Catholic and Jewish faiths.

Thousands attended the numerous memorial and funeral services held in the days after the accident. The City Council declared 48 hours of mourning. That summer, Centenary College dedicated 12 oak trees and a monument to honor the victims, three of whom were on the board of trustees.

"It set back Shreveport and it took us a while to recover. It was a big blow because of the quality of the people on that plane," said longtime community leader Virginia Shehee.

"They were leaders of the civic, social and business communities. We will never know what impact they might have had if they had lived."

The men, returning to Shreveport on a United Gas plane after a duck hunting adventure to South Louisiana, were part of a larger group that had split up for the return trip. United Gas President N.C. McGowen returned with others on the first plane, landing at 5:15 p.m., while the second plane fell 10 miles short, unable to carry the ice that had formed on its wings.

Shreveport business leaders killed in the fiery crash:

n J.B. Atkins, 56, oilman and chairman of the board of Atlas Processing Co.

n J.P. Evans, 69, independent oil producer.

n R.H. Hargrove, 56, president of Texas Eastern Transmission Co.

n Justin R. Querbes, 61, president of Querbes and Bourquin Investment Co.

n Randolph Querbes, 59, president of Interstate Electric Co. and brother of Justin Querbes.

n E. Bernard Weiss, 55, vice president of Goldring's, a chain of fashion stores.

The tragedy reached beyond Louisiana. Other victims included Thomas E. Braniff of Dallas, an aviation pioneer who co-founded Braniff Airways, and Edgar Tobin, an ace World War One fighter pilot who owned the largest aerial mapping firm in the world at the time of his death.

But the pain was particularly intense in Shreveport, for these were leaders not only of business, but also of civic groups, education, religion and philanthropy.

"For one catastrophe, Shreveport had never seen anything like this before and never has since," said historian Eric Brock. "Time magazine did a story on it and noted it was a loss to American business.

"The city was very depressed. Shreveport was in a state of 'Where do we go from here? How do we pick up the pieces?' It wasn't just business. It was civic leadership."

But the city, which entered a time of collective grieving after the plane crash, did heal and move forward in what turned out to be a prosperous decade. The local economy was based heavily on the oil and gas industry, with a population in Caddo and Bossier parishes topping 200,000.

Buildings like the Petroleum Tower and Beck Building opened and changed the downtown skyline. The city adopted a master plan, developers created shopping centers, the Civic Center was dedicated. Construction of homes, schools, churches, hotels and other buildings continued at a rapid pace, with the building boom hitting a record $35.6 million worth of construction work in 1955.

"It was an era of growth and prosperity for the city and that did not stop in 1954. I never felt like policies or directions had been altered because of that accident," said Gardner.

"I think myths have grown over the years that this brought people into power who were not ready for it. Shreveport had a well-defined power structure - the banks, the newspapers and the utilities - and those institutions were not affected by that plane crash.

"There was tremendous personal tragedy, but I do not think this changed the history of Shreveport."

There are questions, though, that can never be answered.

Attorney Joseph Hargrove Jr. was 4 years old at the time of the accident. He has a photograph in his office today showing him in the arms of a grandfather he barely remembers, R.H. Hargrove.

"I remember we were all waiting for my grandfather to get back. I was at their house and I remember people getting nervous and wringing their hands and then I was sent back home," he said.

"My grandfather was in the prime of his business career and who knows what would have happened? Maybe Texas Eastern (which eventually moved its work force to Houston) would have stayed in Shreveport longer. It was a terrible tragedy."

Younger brother R. Clyde Hargrove II, 48, said the accident was rarely discussed in the family. He eventually obtained a copy of the accident report to learn the details of what happened.

"The pain and agony never really went away," said Hargrove, who often took his grandmother out to dinner on Jan. 10 to help her deal with the memories of that day. "There was a lot of pain hanging out there and there still is."

Times photographer Langston McEachern, now retired, was at home when an editor called with news of the crash. He met a reporter and they rushed to the scene.

"We were the first ones there. It was kind of snowing and it was dark. It was bad," he said.

"It was broken up, the wings and all, but you could tell it was a plane. It was a sad thing. There was a smoldering fire, but it was as quiet as could be."

McEachern knew all of the plane's occupants, but didn't stop to think about the personal loss that evening. He had a job to do and little time to meet his deadline.

"When we heard the sirens coming, we got out of there so we wouldn't get trapped back in there by the rescue vehicles," he said.

"I went back out the next morning and they were sifting through everything. I found out later they were looking for the diamond rings these men had on - and they found them. It was unbelievable."

What those men might have accomplished had they landed safely that night continues to fuel discussion of the tragedy.

"It has gripped the city for 50 years," Brock said. "There will always be the question, 'What if?' That's something we will never know."