Jack & Jude: Igniting the adventurious spirit
by Jack and Jude 13 Jun 2021 19:48 UTC
Newspaper headline © Jack and Jude
I'm going to start this blog with a reminisce of my first brush with death, because as a little boy it created an adventurous spirit deep within me.
I'm thinking of these things at this moment because I am facing another birthday in a few days and so I'm immersing myself in a large pool of memories and wondering how it began, as one does when getting older.
I was there
Yes, I was on that playground when the crippled four-engine aircraft plummeted into our playing fields bursting into high octane yellow flames. I was 12.
It was a Friday, the end of the school term with the seniors in the auditorium practicing their graduation. I remember being in my street clothes instead of gym shorts. Details remembered because of my brush with death, and because I'd just put my prized Levi jacket on my line-up number, a white painted 33 on black bitumen, then ran off to play Four Square with my pals.
I heard no warning noise. Just someone close pointing and calling excitedly, "Hey look at the hotshot pilot." And remember turning to see a mighty four engine, propeller driven passenger aircraft gliding over the school garden before passing close over our gymnasium with a stream of smoke trailing behind. The tail section falling off in flames sent the kids running like a pack of frightened animals.
Maybe the kids of today, with all their virtual reality gaming, would have calmly found shelter, but my prized Levi Jacket lay on the ground between me and the plane. So I made a dash for it. Kids were everywhere, running from the plane towards a tall cyclone fence separating my junior high from the primary school next door.
Racing towards the plane
I'm watching it in slow motion, seeing its nose hit our playing fields pretty much in the middle of the three of them. Then, frame by frame, the silver aluminium airliner crumpled and burst into a ball of flames. That turned me around, running for my life. My prized jacket forgotten.
You know how in life-threatening moments; they seem to pass one frame at a time. Running away like a frightened gazelle, I have in my head an image of a school friend leaping that fence. Admittedly, he was an outstanding athlete, but the fence must have been eight feet tall. Right after that, I remember feeling tiny tingles on my ears and for the longest time wondered what they were, then nothing.
Next, came so much noise; wailing, screaming, and sirens. Then columns of black smoke as I picked myself up from the flattened fence and stood agog at the war scene around me.
Three of my fellow students died, including my best friend Evan, but he didn't die straightaway. A piece of propeller ripped open his torso. I saw him when they marshalled us off the field with the sirens getting nearer. They had propped Evan up against the brick gym office, and being a kid of twelve raised on a steady stream of action movies, I went to share the moment with my friend. Evan looked comfortable and was lucid. Remarking when he saw me how spectacular it was to see a real plane crash. Not knowing what to make of that, I gushed "yeah." Then my body started trembling when I saw the blood next to the areas of black. When I last saw Evan, his freckled face atop a soiled checked shirt appeared at peace. Two days later, his young life ended.
You know, there was so much pandemonium rushing towards us as I walked past the gymnasium and into the school that I don't remember police or firemen. And not knowing what to do, I made my way back to the school bike racks. I always rode my bike to school. Bikes are freedom to a twelve-year-old.
Riding out the school grounds against the flow of near hysterical people, lines of cars and flashing lights that went on for blocks, I'm not sure what I was thinking. Maybe I just wanted some space to put the pieces together and reach peace.
Anyway, in her car, my mom found me. She, of course, was hysterical; crying, hugging, and kissing me. And not knowing anything about any deaths, I thought, this is nice, what an adventure.
Looking back
I'm now looking back over my life, wondering why I made a few of those heroic life-changing decisions, and I've come upon that moment when I turned and ran from danger instead of retrieving my cherished Levi jacket with its bold brass buttons and brand insignia on the pocket. As my young life settled, I came to believe my jacket became toast in that disaster, and that if I'd kept running for it, so would have I. A powerful survival lesson learnt in technicolour.
Born in Hollywood, I liked happy endings. Don't we all. Mine came several weeks later with an announcement that they had collected personal belongings from the sports area, which, of course, had to be rebuilt. The next school term was well on its way when I entered the schoolroom set aside for our lost goods, all laid out neatly in piles on the floor along the walls. Lunch boxes, sweaters and jumpers mostly. But, quite surprising me, among them I spotted that familiar Levi material and pulled out my much loved prized jacket that made me look so much like Paul Newman. Only there was a massive black stain up one side, which didn't feel greasy or dirty. Maybe it had been washed. But Paul Newmanwouldn't wear it, and nor would I ever again. But I learnt my second great lesson in life. Good health is far more important than transient goods.
Chain of events
On January 31, 1957, the DC-7B, earmarked for delivery to Continental Airlines, took off from the Santa Monica Airport at 10:15 AM on its first functional test flight with a crew of four Douglas personnel aboard. Meanwhile, in Palmdale to the north, a pair of two-man F-89J Scorpion fighter jets took off at 10:50 AM on test flights that involved a check of their on-board radar equipment. Both jets and the DC-7B were performing their individual tests at an altitude of 25,000 feet in clear skies over the San Fernando Valley when, at about 11:18 AM, a high-speed, near-head-on midair collision occurred.
Following the collision of the planes, Curtiss Adams, the radarman aboard the eastbound twin-engine F-89J Scorpion, was able to bail out of the stricken fighter jet and, despite incurring serious burns, parachuted to a landing onto a garage roof in Burbank, breaking his leg when he fell to the ground. The fighter jet's pilot, Roland E. Owen, died when the aircraft plummeted in flames into La Tuna Canyon in the Verdugo Mountains.
The DC-7B, with a portion of its left wing sheared off, raining debris onto the neighborhoods below, remained airborne for a few minutes, then rolled to the left and began an uncontrolled high-velocity dive earthward over Pacoima. Seconds later, the hurtling wreckage slammed into the grounds of the Pacoima Congregational Church and the adjacent playground of Pacoima Junior High School, killing all four Douglas crewmen. On the school playground, where some 220 boys were just ending their outdoor athletics activities, two students, Ronnie Brann, 13, and Robert Zallan, 12, were struck and killed by wreckage from the crashing airliner. A third gravely injured student, Evan Elsner, 12, died two days later in a local hospital. An estimated 74 more students on the school playground suffered injuries ranging from minor to critical.
This article has been provided by the courtesy of jackandjude.com.