Many people have particular days, or events, in their lives, that they can point to and say, that’s when everything changed for me. Sometimes it’s the death of a parent, or moving to a new city, or getting married – whatever.
For me, that event was the crash of TWA FL 800 on July 17, 1996. That’s when everything changed for me.
I had been in the Air Force Auxiliary for about 5 years, and had received a fair amount of training in search and rescue techniques and practices. I had even participated in actual missions by that time, and I guess I considered myself a fairly together ground team leader.
Ha.
I was watching TV at a friend’s house the evening of the 17th, and had for some reason turned my pager off. A news crawl at the bottom of the TV screen screamed that a 747 had gone down off of Long Island, and the Coast Guard was looking for survivors. That kind of scared me, and I got up and turned my pager back on, and I’d missed about a dozen pages. That really scared me.
I went home then, to get my gear and team together, and we all met at about 6 AM at the Coast Guard station in East Moriches. The last thing I did before I left my house was take some civilian clothes and personal items and pack them in a cranberry-colored Jansport knapsack, because I figured I’d be away for a good bit of time and I’d appreciate the stuff later in the week. The drive out to Moriches with my team was uneventful, even good, because we were all trying to pump each other up and at that time we believed that we’d find survivors. It felt great to be on our way to help people who were in a terrible situation.
When we got to the Coast Guard station, I pulled in and identified myself and was instructed to drive to a point just outside the main building, and that someone there would tell me and my team what to do first. I stopped the van and made sure that everyone and all of their gear left the vehicle, and then I got out.
That’s when everything changed.
As I was putting my gear on the ground, I looked down and, about three feet away from me was my cranberry Jansport knapsack. I didn’t remember taking it out of the vehicle, though, so I looked back in the van, and sure enough, it was in the back seat. What the hell? I looked back at the knapsack. Then I realized that it was with some other pieces of luggage which didn’t belong to my team. And it was wet.
And the world sort of shifted just a little. Things actually swam in front of my eyes.
Someone had packed that knapsack the day before, just as I’d packed mine the night before. Someone had been psyched for a trip to Paris, and had put their things in that knapsack just as lovingly and carefully as I’d packed my things. And it had been put on a plane and the plane exploded in midair and came down into the ocean, with the knapsack. And I knew we weren’t on a search and rescue mission. This was a recovery mission, and there were no survivors. They were all dead, including whoever belonged to that knapsack. My knapsack.
I must have stood there for a long time, unable to move or speak. I knew that someone was calling my name, but I couldn’t hear properly. Then a large guy in a Navy uniform grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me. Hard. I looked at him, and he said; “Captain Savery: are you going to be able to do this?” I nodded without saying anything, and put my own knapsack on my shoulders, and followed the officer into the building. But when I put my foot down on the ground to follow him, I was a different person.
Today is ten years since that day. There is a memorial out on Long Island, dedicated to the victims, of course, but also dedicated to the many, many people like those in the Air Force Auxiliary who tried to help in those awful days. These words are from the memorial in Smith Point Park:
“Thousands more joined in the rescue efforts. And when they realized no rescue was possible. They turned with equal courage to the dangerous and painful work of recovering the lost...long will the world remember the compassion and the heroism shown on this ocean shoreline and the years will not diminish the heartfelt gratitude of the families for the heroes of that dark time.”
I still remember the names of a lot of the 230 people on that plane. And I still think of the people working at that Coast Guard station, and at the hangar at Calverton, putting the plane back together, and at the Ramada Inn near JFK, staying with the families. I think about all of those people a lot. And I’m thinking about them today.
Both photos are from the AP.
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