Peter Mallen, Atlanta Temple Ex-President, Dies in Fiery Plane Crash
Peter Mallen
The popular former president of an Atlanta synagogue was idenitified yesterday as one of two people who died when his small plane crashed in a northwest Atlanta neighborhood Tuesday.
Peter Mallen
Peter Mallen, 67, the founder of a high-tech textile company, was piloting the plane when it went down and exploded into flames near Interstate 285, the Atlanta Journal Constitution reported.
Officials say they are investigating and do not know the cause of the crash, which also killed a 26-year-old Emory University graduate.
Mallen, a married father of four, was president of the Temple in Atlanta from 2004 to 2006.
Friends and employees expressed their gratitude for Mallen’s warm smile and good nature.
“I only worked for Peter for two years,” Carla Silver said on the website of Dressler’s Jewish Funeral Care, which is handling services for Mallen. “I have never forgotten those days learning his business.”
It was Mallen’s second plane crash, and the second one to claim a life in his immediate family.
On Oct. 20, 1998, his small plane crash landed in a field near Rio Rancho, N.M., while on a flight from Las Vegas to Atlanta. Neither Mallen nor his passenger was injured, but the plane was destroyed.
In 1972, Mallen’s brother, Steven Mallen, was killed when his small plane crashed near Jasper, Ga., according to federal records.
Mallen was born and raised in Chatanooga, Tenn. After college, Mallen founded Mallen Industries, a textile manufacturing company. Peter married Janie Mallen on May 11, 1985, and they started a family together in Atlanta shortly thereafter.
He served as President of Mallen Industries, Chairman of United Knitting, President of The Temple in Atlanta, and was a member of the board of National Jewish Hospital in Denver as well as other notable institutions.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
