Chapter 4

The wheels of a Frontier Airlines twin turboprop commuter plane struck the runway with a bouncing chirp, and I was amazed to find myself in Omaha again. 

We taxied around the airport until we arrived at our place on the tarmac, and I unbuckled my seat belt and moved to the door, gingerly working my way down the steps extending from the plane.  I walked briskly through sunshine and the smell of airline exhaust across the tarmac and into the terminal. 

All airports have a unique smell, and Omaha was no different.  I remembered it’s signature aroma from days past.  I walked over the polished and smooth floor, strolling my small carry-on bag behind me toward the rental car desk to claim my ride for the next week. 

Eventually I slid into the drivers seat of a white Pontiac Grand Am.  After several adjustments to the mirrors and seat from those made by the incredibly tall person who had sat there before me, I started it up and guided it out of the parking structure into the brightness of the Midwestern day. 

I hadn’t been here in so long I could scarcely recognize the landscape that rolled gently away from me as I wheeled down the road, a local rock station coming softly through the speakers.  Omaha is not a small city, but it retains its Nebraska roots everywhere you look in the forms of stockyards, grain silos, and railway yards full of the miles of freight cars which send the American prairie’s bounty to the rest of the world. 

I rolled my window down causing the wind to blow across my hair.  The smell of the cool, clean air brought me back to surprisingly good memories, and soothed the anxiousness I felt from what I though I would discover while I was here - back in Nebraska, hunting for the truth. 

            I had never actually expected to be back here like this, but the information I found during my research back home had emboldened me to search further, which much to my astonishment released a virtual landslide of new revelations.  At every step, it seemed, I had lent no faith to any of it bearing any kind of fruit, and at every step I was proven wrong.

My success with the NTSB gave me more ideas about where to look, and as I did, I found more and more people who were there.  And every one of them spoke to me as if they knew me, and they all wanted very much to meet me and tell their stories.  I had been given a reason to come.  Hell, I was compelled to come.  I had to meet these people, and learn their stories if I had any chance of telling mine.  Shelley was right.  Without coming here, I could have never known how much I had to learn. 

I had asked Kim to come along, or rather she had volunteered to meet me out here.  I had told her about my plans for the trip a couple of weeks prior, and much to my surprise she said she wanted to come with me.  She arranged to go out a few days ahead of me to hang out with our family friend Jill, and I would meet her at Jill’s house once I got into town. 

            It would be good to see Jill.  She had been dad’s girlfriend for 10 or so years and came to my family’s rescue in the dark days following the horrors of my step mother.  She always seemed so cool and hip.  She was totally connected with the world and life, and her confidence and grace gave me hope for myself. 

She gave us all hope. She took Kim under her wing and helped her through her adolescence, into becoming a smart and beautiful woman.  I am not sure how things would have been for Kim, or any of us for that matter, were it not for Jill.  She got dad through too.  I have never told her, but she has always been my hero.  We all owe her more than we can ever repay. 

Dad and Jill almost got married, but she was much younger than him, and there were many pressures that kept them from taking that step.  Eventually they broke up, but she fell in love and married her husband Jim, and they raised their family in the quiet and comfortable neighborhood in Omaha where I now found myself, shifting the car into park and getting out before their beautiful stone covered house.

I was struck by her continuing beauty as I walked toward her and I was suddenly transported back in time.  She had not aged in all of these years, and I suddenly felt like I still knew her so well.  I realized at that moment that in all of the time I lived in Nebraska after the crash, she was the closest thing to my mother that I had known.

I hugged her tightly, and for a moment as I held my face to her shoulder I had to try to hold in the sobs that suddenly and unexpectedly sloshed around me.  I was overcome by the maternal way she held me, the way her hair felt in my face, by the complete sincerity of her embrace, by the way she was so glad to see me after so long.  For a moment I wanted to just hold her and cry to her like the child I suddenly felt like, but I was embarrassed and afraid of causing a scene, so I choked it back.  After a few seconds, I collected myself and pulled away with a sheepish smile.

“It’s good to see you,” was all I could manage.

She had two wonderful little boys, Adam and Alec, and each of them treated me like I was some kind of rock star or something from the moment I arrived.  Jill had told them I was coming and they had been waiting excitedly for me all morning.  They swarmed around me as soon as I pulled up, which made me feel really, really good.  After awhile we loaded into Jill’s car and went to a circus themed burger restaurant in a new subdivision nearby.  The boys argued with each other as to who would sit next to me in the car on the way.  I guess it pays to be a celebrity! 

Jill bought me and Kim dinner.  I patted Adam’s head who colored intently next to me, while Alec was lost in his own thing at the other end of the table.  He reminded me of my son, and it made me miss my family terribly, even though I had just left them that morning.

            “What made you decide to start writing about it?”  Jill asked, after awhile of chatting.

            “Weeeell…” I trailed off and really thought about it.  I wasn’t at that moment really sure why I had decided to drop everything, take a week of my vacation time, leave my family, and come out here to learn about something that was not much more, or so it seemed, than a distant memory.

            “I guess the time just seemed right.”  I said after some thought.  I found I was having a difficult time at that moment formulating a sensible response to such an easy question.

The time was right, that was for sure.  Everything had just fallen into place with an ease that I could never have imagined.  I had never been much on the phenomenon of planetary alignment and such, but I was quickly becoming a believer.  People I had never even known about really existed, and they wanted to talk to me. 

I began to realize that the truth, all of it, could really be out there.  I just had to go and gather it all up.  I began to believe that things really happen exactly when they are supposed to, and not a minute sooner or later.  This was one of the few times in my life I just rode with it, and it was taking me exactly where I had to go, for better or for worse.

We spent the night at our childhood friend Cindy’s house in Omaha.  Kim and I drove toward Lincoln the next morning, bright and early.  We had things to do today.  We were going to see Clarke later that morning. 

Clarke Munhenke had been our pastor at the little church we attended as kids, and was a true family friend, although it had been a while since I had seen him.  He knew a lot about that night and had played a big role for us.  Bigger than I ever knew at that time.  My brother had mentioned his name as a good source of information, so, using expert investigative technique, I called Lincoln 411 information and got his number. 

Clarke’s wife Sharon answered the phone.  The last time I saw her was just after I got back from Desert Storm, when I had gone by their acreage in the country east of the city, near the big house where I grew up.  I had just gotten out of the Marines and was heading out to Illinois to set things up for Terri and I to start college.  I had stopped over in Lincoln to see some old friends and found myself near Clarke and Sharon’s house.  Sharon had taught me to play the piano as a kid after the crash, and that turned out to be one of my few outlets for the pain I was in.  It was like my therapy.   

Seemed like a long time ago.  I guess it was.

            When Clarke came to the phone, he was excited to hear from me and when I told him what I was trying to do, he immediately offered his home for us to stay while we were in town.  I happily accepted.  Now I thought of how good it would be to see him, and it made me smile.

            The 60 miles from Omaha to Lincoln down I-80 brought back many memories.  I used to make the trip from Lincoln to Omaha and back on occasion for trips to the Henry Dorley Zoo, or the Spaghetti Plant, or for a weekend with my family at the Granada Royale Hotel, with its neat swimming pool and waterfall.  My dad would go to the Aksarben race track to see horse races sometimes, and later as a teenager, I would sneak up here with my friends for a concert at the Civic Auditorium, or college parties.  They were good times I had all but forgotten. 

Just like from the memories of my childhood, the air was cool and clean and filled with the soft drone of cicada, although not as thick as it would be come July and August when they would drown out practically all other noise, especially as dusk fell.  On the pulsating gyration of their wings they would carry the thick humid air of the prairie summer.

            We drove over the familiar long bridge that spans the Platte River between Omaha and Lincoln.  I had a strange lack of any real consternation.  I believed that nothing bad would happen to me here.  I just knew it was true.  We got to Lincoln a half-hour later as the towering monolith of the Nebraska State Capitol Building came into view a long distance off on the horizon.  At around 400 hundred feet, it was by far the tallest structure in the region.  I have always thought it was the most impressive of all the capitol buildings that I had seen, rivaled only by the Nations Capitol in D.C.

We drove across town to Bryan Memorial Hospital, where Clarke worked as the Hospital Chaplain.  The place had grown from the small brick building I remembered from when dad worked there to a huge medical complex.  I was impressed.  The little city of my youth had really come of age.

We walked into the Hospital and met Clarke at his office.  We chatted with him and he bought us lunch in the Cafeteria.  We ate and told us of our plans and I talked about the circumstances which brought me there.  After giving us the directions to his house and telling us in true Nebraska style to “just come on in,” we let him get back to work, and sauntered out into the sunshine again.

We were going to go to the Civil Air Patrol that night.  I had also always known about the Civil Air Patrol, and that they led the search for us that night.  I had decided during my research prior to this trip that I should check with them too, just in case there was any information that they may have.  Records or something.  I found the website of the Lincoln Composite Squadron and sent an email, just to see what I could find, or if they had any records. 

Within a day I got a response back from their Information Officer, Kathy Hubble.  She said she would find information out for me and did.  I continued to correspond with her leading up to my trip and when she heard I was really coming out, she asked if we would come and talk to the squadron.  Of course I said we would.

That night we went to the CAP headquarters at the Air National Guard base near the Lincoln airport.  It was interesting to be in the building where the search for us had started so long ago.  Other than new technologies, I doubted that much had changed.  I met Kathy and she greeted us warmly and escorted us to the meeting room.  A number of cadets, some just young kids, some in their late teens, and a few adults sat at the tables as the squadron commander talked to them about housekeeping and other items.  Then Kathy introduced Kim and me.

I had thrown together a little presentation about the crash to show to the cadets as a way to thank them for their service and what they could someday do themselves.  It seemed like the least I could do.  It was a photo collage of several pictures of the wreckage that I had.  They watched in total silence, disbelieving of what they saw. 

I spoke briefly and told those cadets that they might go after that kind of crash too, someday.  They asked a lot of questions, but for many of them I did not yet have answers.   

Afterwards we went into a huge hanger connected to the building and watched the cadets drill, marching back and forth under the shadow of the big Air National Guard refueler jet that was parked there.  It was neat to see them marching so sharply, when they were still just kids. 

Then we said goodbye and headed back to Clarke’s house.  We crept up to our respective bedrooms, whispering a hushed goodnight so as not to awaken our hosts.  I entered the small room and sat on the bed, removing my shoes and staring out the darkened window on the opposite wall.  I was tired, but determined. 

I glanced over to a pile of boxes stacked neatly in a small cubby beside the bed and spotted a guitar case tucked on top of them.

Curious, I stood and gently lifted it and set it on the bed, popping open the brass clasps that held together the shaped vinyl halves.  I recognized the instrument immediately.  I had seen Clarke play it many times back at our church during the ‘70’s.  The distinctive “e” shaped Epiphone symbol was still emblazoned near the black pick guard, just like I remembered.  I liked that Clarke would play it at the services.  It made hearing the word of God not so ominous, like it seems to be to purely organ music.  My mom had heard the music from this same guitar with her own ears.

I picked it up and carefully cradled it across my leg, roughly tuning it up then quietly strummed a few chords.  The thinly grained wood had aged nicely and the tone was deep and warm as it resonated through my fingers.  I closed my eyes and listened to the vibration as it gently faded into the air of the room.  After sitting in silence for a few seconds, I replaced the instrument back in the case, setting it all gently back where I found it.

I clicked off the light and lay back on the little bed and stared at the darkened ceiling for a long time before fading off into sleep.

Soon, we would go to Hebron.