I will never forget that day. It was a beautiful day, actually,...until mid-afternoon...On this date (May 26) in 1979..... I had driven a friend to a job interview, and I was waiting in the car. Turned on the car radio in time to hear: "and the plane crashed at O'Hare,..more later".... I shouted, "wait!!" and started trying other radio stations for news..... I quickly gave up, got out of the car and started for the door of the building.... My friend's dad was flying in from Iowa that afternoon, and as you have read I had NO details, other than "plane crashed at O'Hare".
As I ran up the door opened and my friend, Ann, came out. "Plane crash at O'Hare." I shouted and we both started running to my car. I told Ann what little I knew... We had to get to Ann's house and find out what we could from her mom, an alderman in our town. Ann had recently finished her first year of nursing school and was anxious to see where she might go to help out, once we had learned from the radio that it was an outbound flight -her dad was to be inbound. . I also had a friend from work who was flying to California that day, but I had no idea that she had flown out that morning.
I drove as quickly as I could within the bounds of speed limits --trying to not go more than 3 or 4 mph over the speed limit. The closer we got to Ann's house, the more traffic we encountered. They were detouring traffic off of Higgins/Touhy northward on Lee Street, which was the street we were using to get to her house. Anyway, we did not have much of a delay, pulled into their driveway, jumped out of my little car and made for the front door. The door opened before we reached the front porch, Ann's mother in tears, said quietly, "no survivors." Both Ann and I gasped, and started to cry as we followed her mother into the house.... she filled us in with more details (what little they knew at that point). Then I headed home, all the way looking to the west and then southwest, at a dreadful column of ugly black smoke that rose from the wreckage
Once home I turned on the television news to live coverage of the crash, --the plane had crashed and exploded into flames in a field. It was just a few hundred yards short of the Oasis Trailer Park, where thousands of people lived. By the grace of God only a few of the trailers in the trailer park only sustained damage.
272 people died instantly, because an engine fell off of the wing of the plane as it took off from a runway.
A couple of days later I drove over to the area of the crash,.... Touhy Avenue was still closed.... I crossed it on Mount Prospect Road and drove down old Higgins Road, into an industrial area,... it was not possible to get closer, nor did I want to get closer once I caught that terrible scent,.... one I will never, ever forget,..burned human flesh and jet fuel.
It was a horrible tragedy, and I will never forget it.
The Chicago Tribune --link to their coverage.....
NTSB article: the investigation and reasons for the crash of Flight 191
I always remind myself that air travel is safer because of such tragedies.... every plane crash is analyzed by scientists and the NTSB, and they learn from it, and improve the way planes are built and maintained.
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