-Search

Around the same time as Bruce was wondering about us, at the Lincoln Federal Aviation Administration Flight Service Station the manager checked the flight log, right at 7:00 PM, as he did every hour.  One entry had immediately caught his attention and he quickly glanced over at the clock on the wall.  Beech N3600H had not cancelled their flight plan and was now 30 minutes overdue.  He picked up the telephone and called the tower at the Lincoln Municipal Airport to see if anyone knew anything.  No one there had heard from the aircraft or its pilot that day.  They most certainly had not landed at Lincoln at any rate. 

After checking to make sure he hadn’t missed anything, he had to list us as missing.  As was protocol, he then ordered a series of radio calls to be sent out to stations along our flight plan to determine if anyone had heard from us, or if they could establish contact. 

Eventually one of those calls reached Minneapolis Flight Service who confirmed they had communicated with dad as he flew over the dust storm in Kansas around 5:30 that afternoon and had provided him with a weather briefing, but that was all.

At that point the FAA sent requests to all airports and landing strips along and in the vicinity of the flight’s planned path to confirm that our airplane had not in fact landed at one of those and that the pilot had not just neglected to cancel their flight plan.  Many airports were able to answer back right away, but many were closed or not staffed at all. 

At the time, the Midwest contained hundreds of small farm-supporting airfields with very limited communication.  For those places local authorities, generally State Troopers, were dispatched to visually ensure that missing planes were not at any of them.  Unfortunately, this took several hours, but a search would not be launched until they knew for sure. 

The manager probably didn’t like doing it that way, nobody did, but it wasn’t his call.  No one with the authority to do so would be willing to mobilize a full-scale search for what would likely be a false alarm.  Not without an emergency beacon being reported. 

Still he did what he could.  He sent a notice to all flights in the vicinity of the last known flight path to request that they monitor the emergency frequency to see if any could hear an emergency locator transmitter, or ELT, signal.  So far, no one had. 

But no one was listening, yet.

            Dad emerged out of the darkness to where Chris sat forlorn with his brothers and sister.  He started to gather all of the loose clothing that lay around them.

            "Lets get these kids back in the plane."  Dad told Chris.  "It's going to get colder and we may have to wait it out for awhile.  I think the plane is our best bet to stay warm." 

Chris glanced over towards us and then nervously at the plane.  Dad saw his hesitation.

            "Hey," dad said, prompting Chris to look back at him.  He walked up to the boy, and put his hand on his shoulder.  "If there was going to be a fire, it would have happened.  Look, the wings are gone, that's where all of the gas was.  It'll be okay.  We'll be okay…" 

Dad looked for confidence to return to Chris.  Chris silently stood and began to help him gather the loose clothes.  Dad patted his son’s head. 

"Let's get back into the plane and figure out what we're going to do next,” he said.  "I need your help, son, okay?”

            Chris nodded and sheepishly turned toward the plane.  He really didn't want to go back in there.  It had become a scary and foreboding place.  Dad gently lifted Kim and followed Chris slowly back toward the wreckage. 

The gash across the copilot side yawned in the darkness before them as they approached.  Chris stopped at it and stared anxiously inside for a moment hesitating, but then he gingerly stepped into the pilot’s seat and sat down. 

Dad appeared at the door with Kim.  He worked his way into the fuselage and placed her gently on the seat behind Chris.  Then he left and returned a short time later carrying me and laid me next to Kim.  Once finished he disappeared again and returned a few minutes later with Rick, who he set nearest the opening. 

            He went to the pile of clothes he had made next to the plane and filled his arms with shirts, pants, underwear, and any other clothes items that could serve as warmth, then crawled back in the cramped compartment to tuck them around us in several layers. 

A few minutes later he finished tucking one last article of clothing around us then he stepped back through the opening and surveyed his work with the pen light.  He was for the moment satisfied.  We were now nestled together, seemingly snug and relatively warm.  If it didn’t get too cold, at least we wouldn’t freeze now.

We all appeared stable, and that gave him a little comfort.  He was fairly amazed that one or more of us wasn’t dead yet by that point.  At any rate, he knew that even as an experienced surgeon if there was internal hemorrhaging or other problem with one of us, there wasn’t anything he could do without an operating table anyway.  But for now all signs were positive.  There wasn’t any more he could do with us but hope and wait. 

He didn’t like to just hope and wait.  It wasn’t really his nature, to go with the whim of a situation.  He liked to be in charge.  But for now he saw no options.  The emergency beacon was still functioning and someone would come soon and rescue them.  He just had to be patient.  Besides, where was he going to go?

Dad pointed the light at the pilot’s seat.  Chris had settled in there, pulling a thin jacket they had rummaged around his shoulders.

“Let me see your hand,” dad said.  Chris worked his arm out of the sling and held it out using his good hand to support it.  Dad reached in and examined it once more.  The make-shift work he had done was effective.  He had wrapped it and it was about as well supported as it could be out here.  The bandage seemed to have stopped the bleeding on his hand, and his arm was well immobilized. 

He looked Chris over with the light.  He was dirty, and covered in smears of blood and mud, but didn’t seem to have any other injuries.  Dad wished he was in as good of shape as the boy.  He wasn’t in pain, but his body throbbed.  He knew his shock was masking the pain.  He knew he was hurt.  But he was not yet willing to let that stop him from protecting us. 

He’d have to be dead first.

“You’re sure you’re okay?”  He asked.  “No new pain anywhere?”  Chris shook his head and positioned the sling around his arm, then folded it to his chest again.

“Okay,” dad said.  “You stay here with the kids.  I am going to look for mom again, okay?” 

Chris nodded, and dad stepped back out of the plane. 

Dad made his way back to the tail and headed out again.  He walked in more or less the same direction as last time, but not quite, just in case she was off to the side.  When he reached the grass again he wadded into it a little way.  She could have been buried in it and out of sight.  He searched around a little more before he realized something else was missing.

There was no scar from the impact and subsequent slide across the grass, as there would have been if the plane came through here.  There was no debris, either.  There was nothing.

He couldn’t immediately figure out how that was possible, until he considered that we may have turned as we slid.  If we had, then the way the tail was pointing wouldn’t be the exact way we came from…it could just be pointing in some random direction.  That meant mom could be anywhere.  He calmed himself down at the thought and began to make his way back to the plane again. 

When he got there, he examined the wreckage scattered on the ground around the plane, and began to see where the debris appeared to be extending away from the plane.  The main concentration of debris appeared to be heading in a direction slightly forward of the right wing. 

If that was where we had come, the plane had almost rotated a full turn, or maybe more than one full turn, he couldn’t remember.  But it appeared from the debris that it was almost facing backward from it's original path of travel.  It was pointed in the same direction as the distant road where he and Chris had heard the car before.

That direction was where she would have fallen.  At any rate, she couldn’t be far off, unless somehow she had walked away.  Even if she had, she still couldn’t be far. 

 “Char!”  He called through cupped hands.  “Chaaaar!”  
     
No answer came from the breeze floating all around him.