-Long and Winding Road

We all turned out okay in the end, I guess.  “Okay” being a relative word.  Life wasn’t always easy, but is it ever?  Through it all, we stayed together, and that is what’s important.  I think mom would be content.

Chris is a successful real estate agent and businessman, and he and his wife Debbie are happy and have wealth beyond dollars. 

Rick lost himself in the written word shortly after the crash and emerged after high school an academic.  He began college at Nebraska Wesleyan University before ending up at Brown University where he got a Masters degree in Education.  He is teacher up near San Francisco with his wife, Mary.  

Kim also went on to get a Masters degree in Human Resources.  She is married and living happily with her husband Tim in Reno.  She just gave birth to her first son. 

We all have people we love and who take care of us.  And we remain close despite of, or maybe because of, the tragedy we have all experienced. 

Larry Russell thought about us a few times in the intervening years.  Not long after he went looking for us, he was coming in for a landing at Lincoln in his helicopter.  The locator beacon antennae that he had outfitted the helicopter with, the same one that had detected our signal, snapped off and flew into his tail rotor, shattering it and spinning the helicopter in what they call an auto-rotation.  He managed to get it down, but it was a harrowing experience.  He still has pieces of the rotor, as a memento of survival.  He and the helicopter were flying together again in a few weeks.

A few years after that, he was flying a mission for the Lancaster County Sheriff department, and passed over a mountain ridge in Arizona in a Piper Cherokee when he hit what is known as a mountain wave.  This happens when air cools rapidly as it crosses a ridge, and cascades down the other side, like a waterfall of air.  Aircraft flying into one are helpless and at their mercy, as was Larry.  One moment he was flying along and the next maps, cups, and McDonalds french frys were levitating around him as he suddenly plummeted down the face of the mountain.  He kept his wits and put the plane into a circular decent to slow it down, then at the last possible instant, managed to break free of the mountain wave and keep flying.  It was only luck that the whole thing occurred over a deep valley; otherwise the results would have been much different. 

His passenger, sleeping in the back, never knew anything had happened.

Jon Morris stayed on with the CAP and remained a cop with the Lincoln Police.  He went on many more missions with the CAP, but the memory of our crash always stayed with him.  Another mission occurred a few years after our crash when he was on a recovery mission involving a commercial airline accident.  After several hours on the scene, he was asked to take a look at the body of the copilot, who had just been recovered from the wreckage.  It was only upon seeing him that he realized he was looking at his brother in law, who flew for the airline.  He had to break the news to his wife.  It was all part of the job with the CAP.

Jim Nitz stayed active in the Lincoln CAP, although he left Lincoln to move to North Platte to become a Disaster Planner for Lincoln County, Nebraska, where he lives. 

Helen Boman, Dr. Bunting, Gary, Dick, Blanche and Evelyn stayed in Hebron.  Helen was still a nurse at the Thayer County Medical Center when I finally met her.  We remain great friends. 

Dr. Bunting retired and lives with his wife in a little nursing home directly across from the hospital.   

Dr. Pembry moved away from Hebron to live in Omaha several years after our crash.  His own son was killed in an airplane two years after mom, and not far away.  He was flying a crop duster near Hebron and had just finished a run when the wind shifted and blew the pesticide into him.  He lost consciousness and crashed into the field he was spraying.

Gary is still the postman for Hebron, and he and Dick are still volunteer firefighters for Thayer County.  Blanch and Evelyn are retired from the hospital.

Clarke and Sharon Mundhenke stayed in Lincoln.  Clarke left being a pastor at Trinity Chapel and turned towards working the local hospitals as a chaplain full time.  He keeps busy.

Bruce Miller stayed in Lincoln and was the Chief of Staff at Lincoln General for many years.  Bruce retired from medicine, but he continued to be a pilot.  He and my father remained great and lifelong friends, as am I and his son, Greg.  Our lives were strangely parallel.  But that’s a different story… 

Ron Craig also stayed in Lincoln to practice medicine.  He became part of my family’s club when he was flying his airplane out of Winslow, Arizona in 2006.   The engine died at 300 feet as he was taking off.  He managed to point the plane at a road, but it crashed into the desert just beyond and was destroyed.  He and his wife walked away with only bruises.  I would say miraculously, but I know there were no miracles - just a damn good pilot at work.  He was flying again within a month.  My kind of pilot.

Jill died suddenly of an aneurism in 2010.  She was young and healthy and no one can understand why she is gone either.  I think of her sons a lot, and am saddened to know the pain they are now learning.  I pray for them.  I miss her. 

Shelley is still my friend.

I don’t know what became of Ricky Arnold or David McLaughlin.  To me, they are two specters that appeared from nowhere to save us, then disappeared back into the mist.  I have heard that David lives in some tiny town somewhere in Nebraska but the letters I have sent have not reached him, I assume.  I am still looking for both of them.  I would like to shake their hands.

Dad remarried again to Lilly, and he lives in Los Angeles near us and his first grandson.  He will always be a doctor.  He still wears his white coat, and I hope he always will.  He flew a few times after the crash but will never land again.  He says he made his last landing in that field.  It took thirty years for us to go back in our minds to that night in the field and really work it out.  But I know it has been good for both of us.  We got to know each other like we never had.  We are lucky. 

As for me, I wrote about that part of my life.  Learning about it gave me the opportunity to meet some amazing people and reengage the others I did known who were there.  It gave me the opportunity to share with all of them an experience that connected us to one another one cold February, long ago.   

And in doing so I made some additional discoveries I had not anticipated.  Discoveries having nothing to do with ATLS and that are not taught in any course. 

I learned for certain that life isn’t fair…like fairness has anything to do with anything.  We come into this world as perfect little beings, and then are gradually contaminated and corrupted and pulled apart by life.  If we are lucky we get to grow old, wear out, and die.  We spend the time in between trying to figure it all out, but we never do.  We try to avoid the thief of time and that’s the best we can hope for. 

But, through it all, there is goodness and beauty. 

I have my family, who teach me about love every day.  I have friends.  I have mountains to climb and rivers and oceans to swim.  I have clear blue sky to soar through and a wonderful world to explore.   I have air to breathe and I breathe it.  I have life.  It'll never be perfect, but it doesn't have to be.

I took the things I learned and used them to unlock some old doors; let the bats out, clean the cobwebs.  It has indeed been good for me, this journey to the truth.   

Better than I will ever know.  Each day that I find myself above the surface of the earth is indeed a good day, and a new blessing.  I have no illusions about death.  I don’t fear it.  I have dodged it once or twice, but I respect it.  And I know someday it will find me, as it did my mother.  As it does us all.  But when it does, I intend that it will find me thoroughly used.   

And maybe, somehow, its cold touch will finally bring me back to the arms of my mother. 

And everything will be alright.