Warren died February 8, 2008. He was a long-time smokejumper pilot starting his career with the Johnson Flying Service in 1943 and was one of the initial pilots qualified to drop smokejumpers. Warren and Frank Small were in the cockpit of the DC-3 the afternoon that it dropped jumpers on the fateful Mann Gulch Fire in 1949. When the same DC-3 (24230) crashed landed in the Monongahela River in Pennsylvania in 1954, he went to retrieve the aircraft. The aircraft was dried out, minor repairs made and Warren flew the plane back to Missoula. Warren left Johnson Flying Service in 1956 and began a career in corporate aviation.