Pamela Lancaster Ulich, who died in Thursday’s crash.

Courtesy of Ulich family

NEWPORT — He loved flying and the outdoors and provided crucial financing in the 1970s to help start Lupo’s Heartbreak Hotel, the legendary Providence rock club.

She was an angelic soprano who chose this city as a place to put down roots as an innkeeper.

Tributes flowed yesterday from friends and family for the two people who died Thursday evening in a fiery plane crash in Middletown.

The state police yesterday identified the dead as Pamela Ulich Lancaster, 43, who owned and operated the Dragonfly Inn, at 33 Russell Ave., and Charles W. Thompson, 63, of 4 Manning Court, a flight instructor.

The third occupant of the plane, Ulich Lancaster’s husband, Keith Ulich, 28, of Newport, remained in critical condition in Rhode Island Hospital yesterday. Family members said that because of his burns, doctors had to remove both his feet and put him in an induced coma.

Lancaster grew up in England. But she loved to move around.

“She was like a bug that went from flower to flower,” said her sister, Angela Pray, of Westchester, N.Y.

Ulich Lancaster lived for some time in New York City and Long Island, N.Y., where she married Keith Ulich, Pray said. After a trip to Newport, the couple decided to move to the city, even though Keith Ulich continued to work during the week in New York.

“She came here for a visit and liked it and wanted to stay here. She got a job at a bed-and-breakfast,” her sister said.

Ulich Lancaster enjoyed the work so much that about three years ago, she became the owner of the Dragonfly Inn, a two-room bed-and-breakfast on Russell Avenue, in the city’s North End.

Pray described her sister as “very spiritual, very religious.”

“She sang at church every Sunday,” Pray said, although she did not know at which church. Ulich Lancaster also liked to sing on stage in area theatrical performances.

“She was a soprano,” Pray said. “She sang her whole life.”

Her talents were appreciated. The Preservation Society of Newport County had invited Ulich Lancaster to perform on New Year’s Eve at The Breakers mansion. And the Newport Playhouse & Cabaret Restaurant offered her roles in numerous productions over the past year.

“She had an angelic voice,” said general manager Jonathan Perry. “She is a trained operatic singer. She brought the house down.”

She performed most recently in Bed-room Farce, an English comedy that was not a musical.

Perry said Ulich Lancaster would “juggle between her bed-and-breakfast and doing the cabaret.” Meanwhile, he said, Keith Ulich worked in New York City but return on weekends and come to the playhouse to be with her.

“She was very close to all of us, her and her husband,” Perry said. “They were a laid-back couple” but “always together.”

“Our prayers go out to Keith,” he said.

Michael Healey, a local actor who encouraged Ulich Lancaster to get active in local theater, said, “She was a pretty, vivacious, attractive, fun person, with that lovely north of England accent. It’s just terribly tragic.”

While Ulich Lancaster was attracted to the stage, her husband was drawn to engines, motorcycles and, most recently, planes.

“Her husband was one of those need-for-speed type people. He just wanted to have the speed,” said Pray. “He was having pilot lessons and was about to get his license. It was the second or third time she had been up with him. She said it was very nice.”

Ulich Lancaster had a reputation for being a lover of animals. She had a dog and cat and was involved with the Potter League for Animals, in Middletown, Pray said. The Web site for the Dragonfly Inn informs prospective guests, “We are pet friendly!”

“She was very much into animal rights,” Pray said.

Pray said her parents, Hilda and Derek Lancaster, flew in from England to attend the funeral services to be held today.

Charles Thompson was a certified pilot who worked as a flight instructor at Newport State Airport.

Rich Lupo, the owner of Lupo’s Heartbreak Hotel, met Thompson when they were both seniors at Brown University.

Thompson, a New Jersey native, was a few years older than Lupo. He had enrolled at Brown in the late 1960s and in his sophomore year he left to join the Army.

After serving a tour of duty in Vietnam as a combat medic, he returned to Brown on the GI Bill and graduated in 1971. Lupo and Thompson were roommates for years after graduation.

In 1975, when Lupo was trying to open his club, he realized that he wouldn’t have enough money for the venture. Thompson lent him money to make it happen.

“I said, ‘I don’t think I’ll make it,’ ” Lupo recalled yesterday. “He said, ‘Take this. Pay me back when you can.’ ”

Lupo paid him back within the year. He said he wouldn’t have been able to start the club without Thompson’s help.

He described Thompson as “off-the-charts easygoing, laissez-faire, somewhat ego-less.”

Jim Wolpaw, a Providence-based filmmaker who met Thompson in the 1970s through Lupo, said, “His friends joked that he was the oldest living teenager in the world. You’d never think that he was 63. He just didn’t seem it.”

According to Wolpaw, Thompson got his commercial pilot’s license soon after graduating from Brown. Thompson gave flight lessons and he also worked for photographers during America’s Cup races, flying them over the competing yachts.

Thompson worked at Bridges, a Jamestown agency that serves people with developmental disabilities, for many years. Before that, he worked with at-risk youth, said Wolpaw.

“He really could talk to anybody,” said Wolpaw. “He was just good at getting to know people. Everybody liked him. There was something special about him. People really liked Charlie.”

Thompson leaves his wife, Madeleine Carson of Newport; his daughter, Nina Thompson of Newport; his brother, John Thompson of Niantic, Conn.; his stepmother, Rusty Thompson of Pompton Plains, N.J.; and his former wife, Linda Perrotta of Newport. A celebration of his life will be held July 20 from 2 to 6 p.m. at the Norman Bird Sanctuary, in Middletown.

rsalit@projo.com