Most often cartwheels are assigned to the days of fun and frolick of youth or gymnasts honing their craft working toward a medal. You might even it is an action movie as a way to dodge bullets. It is not often that cartwheels are associated with something dark, but such was the case on July 19, 1989.
This is how much of the US and some parts of the world remember that date and that cartwheel.
It was far more than that for me . . . and my friend.
For us, for her, and many others that cartwheel would begin days and months of intense physical and emotional pain.
It was an ending. . .
There were 285 passengers, and 10 crew members on board United Airlines (UAL) fight 232 that afternoon. It left Denver at 1:09 pm MDT heading for Chicago. It never made it due to catastrophic failure, and had to divert to Sioux City, Iowa for an emergency landing.
The airplane involved in the crash was a McDonnell Douglas DC-10. It may have been a wonderful airplane for pilots, but some Airframe and Powerplant mechanics (those that fix the engines, body, etc. of an aircraft) had another name for it; Death Coffin 10. My ex-husband was one of those mechanics.
The aircraft had many flaws. The one flaw that became apparent that day was that while the DC-10 had redundancy systems to operate the rudder, ailerons, flaps, etc., in case something failed, those systems were close together in the tail. So when the number 2 engine (the one in the tail) failed and flew apart in flight, the shrapnel cut the line of one system of controls it cut the lines of the redundant systems as well.
The pilot Alfred C. Haynes and his flight crew, First Officer William Records, Second Officer Dudley Dvorak and joined later by off duty UAL flight instructor Dennis E. Fitch, (who happened to be seated in first class), did a spectacular job in flying the plane without hydraulics (no flaps, no rudder, etc.) keeping it level, at altitude and directed using just the throttles for the two remaining engines.
Fighting the forces of the damaged craft the pilot, crew and flight instructor, got the craft to Sioux City. There using right hand turns (due to tail damage) they did a "wide arch corkscrew," dumping fuel. They then lined up the best they could with the smallest of the airport runway, the only one they could get to, and descend with the plane level.
Alerted to the damaged airplane coming in, the local media and TV cameras made their way to the airport. And it looked for a moment as if the plane would touch down on it's wheels. But the right wing dipped and the tip hit the runway, igniting the remaining fuel and sending the craft into a cartwheel.
Like the crew of US Airways Flight 1549 and it's pilot Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger who landed in the Hudson and saved their entire flight, the calm and experienced response of pilot Alfred Haynes and his crew, saved the majority of lives and crew on that flight.
But some lives were lost. Out of the 285 passengers, and 10 crew members, 174 passengers and 9 crew members were saved. 111 passengers and 1 crew member lost their lives.
That afternoon, and evening I watched the coverage of the flight from our basement apartment, the flipping of the airplane, the fireball as it skidded across the runway. Something told me I knew someone on the flight.
I waited for the Rocky Mountain News or the Denver Post to print the passenger list. When they did 2 days later, I scoured the list and then breathed a sigh of relief, I didn't recognize any of the names. My mother called less than an hour later, "Walt was on the flight."
I looked again, there at the end of the list was "W. Williams."
The Williams' had been my friends for a long time. For a while we did things in "concentric circle," their UMYF (Unite Methodist Youth Fellowship) and mine attended the same functions. But then, after their marriage and their first child (a daughter) they found our church. My sister was taken with their daughter, regaling us with the latest funny incident between her and Walt at the dinner table.
After I married and continued attending the church our next children would be "born together" Their second daughter and my daughter just weeks apart in 1984 and then their son and my son again weeks apart in 1986.
They were our friends when my ex-husband and I were together. We babysat each others kids, lamented that we could not afford to travel to the nearest connection to Hands Across America and be part, and many things together.
When I was going through my divorce they were very supportive. But sometime during the divorce the company Walt worked for, Otis Elevator, began restructuring and they had to move to Connecticut. Another family in our church, who also worked for Otis moved too. He was Walt's superior in the company. I knew they were coming home for a high school reunion and to see family and friends.
Now, they were supposed to be over the very next week of their visit for dinner and to meet my new husband. Or "re-meet" as the case maybe since we all had been connected with Denver University. Because of our circle of friends it was likely they had all met before and just didn't remember.
I called Rachel asked if there was something I could do. Take the children off her hands for a bit, anything. We spoke, she told me she had had a premonition that something bad was going to happen on that flight, she almost begged him not to go. But he had to, called back to Connecticut for a big meeting that he had to attend, no way around it. So he was on the flight, on his way to attend the meeting, and then he'd be right back, the next day, for the class reunion and all the events with family and friends.
She spoke of how she wished they'd stop playing the plane crash over and over again on tv. To the rest of the US it was a spectacular plane crash, to her it was watching her husband die, over and over again.
A day later I went over to Rachel's in-laws. She and the kids were staying there, and the whole family, and many church families and friends were there holding vigil. The family had been told that even though there were some passengers that were still alive but severely injured and could not be identified Walt was probably not among them. They were asked to send dental record.
Dark humor is often used as a coping mechanism. Walt's mom spoke about about how she had been on her kids to take care of their teeth and not get cavities. Walt never had any, and there wasn't any identifiable about his mouth. She then joked that she should have let him get at least one cavity.
That day I finally coaxed her outside into the sun and we took a walk.
During the hours of vigil in the interminable waiting for news, the family broke out into a chorus of Mickey Mouse. Instead of the tension and raw nerves you might expect, Walt's family and friends sang children's songs. They were coping, and waiting. Then it came, his body had been identified. Any hope, any sliver of hope Rachel had, no matter how illogical, that one of those still unidentified, in coma victims was Walt, was now gone.
The section of the craft Walt was sitting in, literally had a diagonal dividing line. Everyone to the right of him lived. Eventually Rachel got to speak to the survivors that sat to the right of Walt. She wanted to find out about his last minutes. They told her he spent that time quietly, "reading." She knew without doubt he was not reading, but praying instead.
The next week it seemed the whole of Denver was manic. There was joyful televised reunions of those who had lived and there were the funerals for those who hadn't. You knew a UAL 232 funeral was going on by how huge the attendance was at a church mid week. Walt's was no different.
After the funeral Walt's best friend volunteered to fly back to Connecticut and drive Rachel's van back so she would have a vehicle while she decided what to do. He filled the van with everything she and the kids asked for. The stuffed animals, missed and needed to get through the tough weeks ahead, the pictures, all the pictures of the family. The gifts Walt had given Rachel and other things of comfort. Cruelly though on a pitstop to eat, rest, go to the bathroom, the van and all it's contents were stolen.
Rachel was heart stricken.
Rachel decided to move back to Denver. She enrolled the children in school, went back to "our" church, and got on with her life, without Walt, the man she had spent all her adult life with, her high school sweetheart. I was no longer at the church as my new life had begun and I was breaking out of the old one.
Rachel and I spoke infrequently but we still babysat. Unfortunately the church began to feel less and less like home for her as people just didn't know how to talk to a young widow with three children whose husband had died such a public death. After 3 years she left too.
Rachel's oldest daughter, about nine at the time her father died, became a very angry child. She was angry at the world, angry at God, and angry at her mother. Lilly (not the oldest daughter's real name) reasoned that since her mom had had a premonition she should have forced Walt to stay off that flight. I'm not sure if even today Lilly has let go of all the anger.
. . . and a beginning
After selling the house in CT Rachel bought one in a Denver suburb. She planned to get her degree in education. One of the things was wasn't in the van when it was stolen was Walt's collection of hats. Walt loved hats, and this was not just baseball hats, this was fedora, porkpie and bowler type of hats. These hats would form a neat decoration, a horizontal row ringing the top of the wall(s), for their son, a boy who would never know and hardly remember his dad.
She and his best friend Mike would lean on and support each other through their grief. If sometimes seemed that to work through his grief Mike worked hard to soften hers. They would fall in-love and wed some 5 years or so after the crash. They are still together.
Mike's passion was (and is) bugs. He is by education and trade an entomologist. His dream was to create a place where no matter the time of year people could come and see and get to know bugs, spiders and butterflies. To watch them, to study them, to draw, or paint or photograph them. To see them as he saw them, wondrous creatures. He "infected" (his words) Rachel with the same admiration of bugs and together, along with other scientist and friends they would find land in Westminster, CO and start the Butterfly Pavilion.
Some of the money to buy the land, and get the project off the ground came from settlements over Walt's death. The hundreds and thousands of people who have walked through it's doors don't know that. Mike and Rachel however are now separated from the Butterfly Pavilion. Though their departure was terrible, and heart breaking, their names are on the plaque by the front door.
Mike is still a "bug scientist." He and Rachel have traveled the world studying, collecting photographing insects. Rachel did not become a teacher but got a degree in Criminal Justice and now works with troubled and at risk children. They are also grandparents of four.
This dairy written from love, is my gift to them.