Cars. That was the final topic Casey Crafton texted his 23-year-old nephew, Taylor Hammons, about before boarding American Airlines Flight 5342.
Hammons, who had been joking with him that Jan. 29 afternoon about expensive cars, received the final text read receipt from “Uncle Casey” at 4:07 p.m. before his flight took off at 6:39 p.m. in Wichita, Kan.
“The day of the crash, I actually didn’t know that he was traveling for work,” Hammons tells PEOPLE of Crafton, 40, who was on his way home to his family in Connecticut before the plane collided with a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter over the Potomac River in the Washington, D.C., area.
“Us being car people, we would always find some dream car or something on Facebook Marketplace,” he continues, revealing that his uncle sent him a listing at 3:41 p.m. of a $195,000 1987 Buick Grand National GNX.
“I messaged him back and said, ‘So when do you pick it up?’ And he said, ‘Tomorrow. Sold my house and I’m just going to live in the car.’ Then I responded with, ‘Good move, you can’t drive a house,’ ” Hammons recalls.
Then, Hammons sent his final message to his Uncle Casey.
“The last text I sent him was about the Corvette,” he remembers, referring to a C8 Corvette that recently sold for $3.7 million at a Barrett-Jackson auction. “I just said, ‘Definitely wasn’t worth that $3.7 million that somebody paid but that’s just rich people doing rich people things.’ ”
“And then he read it at 4:07 p.m.,” Hammons adds, noting that he later saw news of the mid-air collision that killed his uncle, 63 other people on the American Airlines flight and three people on the U.S. Army helicopter.
Hammons says he’ll remember his uncle — an airplane mechanic who leaves behind wife Rachel and three sons — for their time together shooting guns, watching The Office and constantly talking about cars.
Crafton had taught his nephew to build cars, something Hammons hopes to put to good use to “keep his legacy alive” by fixing up his uncle’s old car before his oldest son, 10-year-old Easton, learns to drive.
“Growing up he would always come pick me up in Memphis, Tenn., whenever I was young in his Mitsubishi Eclipse,” recalls Hammons, who now lives in Raleigh, N.C. “We were talking about getting ready to build that car to make it ready for one of his kids to be able to drive it — Easton, who is a little more interested in all the car stuff than the other ones. I’ll definitely remember him from that car.”
“I really want to continue to get that car finished for Easton, even without him here. I think that’s something that me and Easton, if not all of the kids, can bond on — and something to just keep his legacy alive,” explains the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga graduate.
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Hammons recently visited the Crafton family in Connecticut for the first time in five years, due to college responsibilities, in December and January.
“Sometimes when I was in college, he would find himself in Chattanooga and so I would go pick him up from the airport, we’d go eat some dinner, and then I would take him back to his hotel room or back to the airport,” he says. “I would call him my best friend.”
Crafton would have turned 41 on Feb. 21.
In his absence, Hammons wants to be there whenever his uncle’s three sons need him for advice to “make sure that they’re taken care of.”
A GoFundMe fundraiser set up to raise funds for the Crafton family has raised more than $71,000 of its $75,000 goal as of Friday, Feb. 7.
“[I want people to remember] how good of a dad he was,” he emphasizes. “Whenever I was up there, and Casey was at work, I’d be with his wife. And we were talking about how she’s there for the love and care — and boy mom stuff — if they get hurt and everything. But every day, those boys, I would say, worshiped the ground that he walked on. Just nothing but playful times and teaching them everything about life.”
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