Wichita might be the country’s smallest big city. Or perhaps the country’s largest town. It is both big, with nearly 400,000 residents, and 550,000 in the larger metro area; and small, the type of place where you know your banker and bump into a friend while running errands.

In recent years, Wichita has dreamed of national recognition, bidding to host major sporting events and vying for new nonstop flights, often by touting Wichita’s legacy as the center of the country’s aviation industry.

Last week, the city fulfilled those two ambitions, hosting the U.S. Figure Skating Championships for the first time, with many spectators and competitors ferried directly to and from Washington, D.C., on a direct flight that was inaugurated just last year.

On Wednesday, those milestones were forever marked by tragedy, when a passenger jet and an Army helicopter collided above the Potomac River in Washington. Many on the flight from Wichita were elite youth figure skaters and their coaches and families.

“This is now unfortunately part of Kansas aviation history,” said Ben Sauceda, the chief executive of the Kansas Aviation Museum in town.

That these skaters were in Wichita was no coincidence. The Wichita Figure Skating Club and Visit Wichita, the region’s tourism marketing arm, had worked to persuade U.S. Figure Skating to hold its championship event in town.

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