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It was an ordinary Saturday morning, so ordinary its details are now forgotten. But that evening my five-year-old daughter, Kinsey, and I were to attend a mother/daughter banquet at church, and Kinsey was bouncing with excitement.
As I got dressed in my bedroom with the television on in the background, the newscast suddenly caught my attention. I moved closer to the set, a sick feeling forming in my stomach. While the details were scarce, the aerial shots of the Valujet plane crash in the Everglades convinced me everyone on board must be dead.
If it weren't for how much it meant to Kinsey, I would have considered not attending the banquet that night. I knew many well-meaning people would question me about my reaction to the crash, and I wasn't sure I could handle it. While I knew no one on that Valujet plane, I felt connected—connected by a memory that sometimes seems forgotten but always is there.
O N A BITTERLY cold January day in 1982, I strapped myself into the rear jump seat of Air Florida Flight 90, took a deep breath, and prepared for takeoff from Washington, D.C. As a flight attendant, I'd spent my day placating passengers who were either fearful or furious because of our many delays due to icy weather. Finally, after de-icing, our flight was allowed to leave. I was as glad as the passengers that we were finally getting underway, and settled back with a sigh of relief.
I knew most young women envied my lifestyle. My job offered exotic travel, and my life at home in Miami was one of constant parties and friends. But lately the partying left me empty. Was there more to life? I wondered. But everyone around me was as mixed up as I was; no one had any answers.
As we began our trip down the runway, the plane picked up speed. But something wasn't quite right. Although I didn't realize it at first, we weren't getting off the ground as quickly as we should have. A few seconds later, we were airborne. But we were 1,900 feet farther down the runway and 15 seconds later than we should have been for a normal takeoff.
When we'd been in the air only a few moments, the plane began to shudder violently. Instinctively I tightened my seat belt. One of the passengers looked at me, terror distorting his face. But after that horrible image, my memory stops. I have no recollection of the 737 crashing against the 14th Street Bridge over the Potomac River, then plunging toward the ice-crusted river. I don't remember the plane slicing through the three-inch thick sheet of ice and crumbling into pieces. What I do remember is suddenly being free in the water, with no idea of how I got there. As I surfaced, I clung to pieces of metal wreckage floating nearby and tried to look for other survivors. The icy water made my entire body numb.
Other people floated near me, clutching at the cold metal and trying to stay afloat. But I saw none of my coworkers, none of the flight crew, none of my friends. Later I learned 74 people died in the crash. Only 5 survived.
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