“Why do you assume you had been the one survivor?”
That’s a query I’ve heard many occasions through the years since I used to be in an airplane that crashed, killing everybody else aboard.
I used to be a typical 15-year-old rising up within the San Gabriel Valley. A pal and neighbor who had a pilot’s license invited me and two others for a trip someday. Feb. 12, 1978. We flew out of El Monte Airport to Apple Valley, had lunch, and had been on the best way again once we hit a storm. The pilot turned disoriented and commenced flying too low. He was solely 19 and hadn’t had a lot expertise flying in climate like that. We clipped a tree and got here crashing right into a snowbank west of the Cajon Go. It was practically a day of frigid chilly earlier than I used to be rescued. I used to be in intensive look after weeks with extreme frostbite, a fractured leg and hip accidents. The docs mentioned with my mother and father the opportunity of amputations.
I didn’t know a lot about life but, and I certain didn’t have any thought why I’d been the only survivor.
I labored onerous to beat my accidents and ended up being a fairly good baseball and basketball participant at Temple Metropolis Excessive College. So after a brief three years (really not so quick after all of the rehab and bodily remedy), I used to be 18 and a baseball participant at a summer season group social gathering to which one in all my teammates had introduced his girlfriend. And she introduced a 17-year-old pal together with her, Laura.
I assumed Laura was the sweetest, nicest, most stunning lady I had ever seen. We turned buddies. She occurred to work at a sun shades retailer on the Santa Anita mall. So that will clarify why I visited the mall increasingly that summer season. We ultimately had a couple of dates. For one date, we went to a live performance in L.A. to see John Waite and Scandal. They turned my favourite musical acts, and I’m certain it needed to do with the reminiscences of being with Laura that evening.
By fall that yr, actual life had intruded. We had been each busy with life after highschool. She started working and was residing at residence in Arcadia. I moved about an hour away to Huntington Seaside. I had simply began courses at Cal State Lengthy Seaside and had an evening job at a health club in Seal Seaside. Smartphones and e mail weren’t round but. There was by no means a breakup. We simply type of drifted aside.
After faculty commencement, I had begun instructing and training basketball and baseball at a highschool in Irvine once I met the co-owner and director of a global sports activities trade program. They organized to ship baseball gamers everywhere in the world on adventures associated to their sport. I used to be invited to educate a gaggle of younger gamers and accompany them to Australia and New Zealand for extra teaching and tournaments. I couldn’t consider my luck. It didn’t even sound actual. For sure, I joined up and had a few of the biggest adventures you can think about. I used to be scared to loss of life to fly. However I figured that if I used to be going to go wherever on the earth, I’d should fly. (It helped that there have been free alcoholic drinks on worldwide flights in these days.) It was price it, although.
I visited Australia, New Zealand and quite a few islands within the Pacific, together with Tahiti, Fiji and Hawaii.
All of it led to a brand new alternative for journey: I used to be invited by a neighborhood baseball membership in Australia to return Down Beneath and run its rising baseball group for a stint. All bills paid. I used to be solely substitute instructing on the time, with no actual connections or commitments, so I used to be all in. I purchased my aircraft ticket, informed my landlord I’d be leaving, and made preparations for my mother and father to care for my two Siberian huskies, Thor and Zeus, whereas I used to be gone.
One in every of my buddies occurred to say that he had run into somebody who mentioned she knew me and had dated me briefly, and wished to get in contact with me. He couldn’t keep in mind her identify, although.
My response? “Who cares! I’m going to Australia!”
I bumped into him once more a couple of weeks later. He mentioned the identical lady had requested about me once more. He started looking his reminiscence for her identify. I informed him I nonetheless didn’t care, that I’d by no means met anybody I’d had a particular feeling for or actually cared that a lot about. Nicely, aside from that one lady again in highschool …
“Laura!” he mentioned, lastly remembering. Her identify was Laura.
My jaw dropped.
I known as my mother and requested her if she nonetheless had our outdated cellphone guide within the kitchen. She did. I requested her to look below the Ks, for Laura’s final identify. Nothing there. Then, she appeared below the Ls.
And she or he recited the quantity she’d written there so a few years in the past below “Laura.”
Would the quantity nonetheless work? Did she nonetheless dwell there at her mother’s home? Amazingly, she answered. We talked and talked and talked. I requested if I might go to her that night. I gladly made the hour-plus drive from Huntington Seaside to Arcadia. I took my huskies with me for ethical assist. I stayed till 10 p.m., simply speaking on her porch, till it was lastly time to drive again to the seaside.
I couldn’t sleep that evening. So I drove again to Arcadia earlier than daybreak the subsequent morning and left flowers on her porch, after which drove again to Huntington Seaside but once more for my substitute instructing job that day.
Inside per week, I had canceled my flight to Australia.
Inside 5 months, on Valentine’s Day weekend (and the anniversary date of my aircraft crash), I paid to have an airplane fly over Huntington Seaside towing a banner that mentioned, “Laura, will you marry me? Love, Jim.”
You see, I lastly had my reply to why I survived.
The writer has been a public highschool instructor for the final 33 years throughout Southern California, spending nearly all of his profession within the Desert Sands Unified College District within the Coachella Valley. He’s at the moment writing a guide about his airplane crash and the way life has unfolded since. He and Laura have three youngsters and have been married 30 years.
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