In 1989, a United Airlines plane travelling from Denver to Chicago was forced to crash-land after the tail engine exploded and the flight control system failed, killing 112 people. Surviving passenger Jerry Schemmel talks about PTSD, survivors’ guilt [there were 184 survivors] and his outlook on life. Schemmel, now a baseball commentator, author and motivational speaker, was deputy commissioner for a minor basketball league at the time of the tragedy.
We weren’t supposed to be on that plane. My boss and great friend Jay Ramsdale and I were travelling together for work, and our original flight was supposed to leave at 7am, Denver time – but it got cancelled and we were put on standby.
Eventually, we got on a plane at 12.45pm – five hours after our original flight – and that’s the one that ended up crashing in Sioux Gateway airport, Iowa.
I had no problem with flying before the crash. I didn’t take my first flight until I was 18 years of age. So even at the age of 29, at the time of the crash, I was fairly new to aviation. To me, it was cool and fun. I didn’t mind it at all. It became a means of transportation that I kind of looked forward to.
On that day, we were flying from Denver to Chicago to make a connection to Columbus, Ohio, for the Continental Basketball Association’s college draft the next day. Back then, I was working for CBA, which was the NBA’s minor league system. Jay was commissioner and I was a deputy commissioner.
After all these years, the one thing I think about more than anything was that Jay didn’t need to be on that flight. He’d had a chance to take one earlier in the morning – it had one seat left – but he turned it down so we could fly together.
It was supposed to be a two-hour flight from Chicago to Denver. But 59 minutes in, almost halfway, there was an explosion. I thought a terrorist had planted a bomb. Pan Am 103 – the Lockerbie bombing – had happened about six months before, so the same thing flashed in my head. Moments later, you felt this reverberation moving from the rear to the front of the plane and we started to drop – almost a free-fall drop. That’s when panic completely took over.
I was in seat 23E, in the middle of the plane, and Jay had been put seven rows behind me in a window seat, so I couldn’t talk to him or comfort each other.
The screaming was coming from everywhere. We had just finished lunch and so half the tray tables were up because the flight attendants were still taking stuff away. Some of the food and trays crashed to the floor, which probably caused a little more panic. I remember watching the crew’s faces just to see if I could read them, but they were calm. They got us as ready as we could possibly be.
Five or six minutes after that explosion, things calmed down because we came out of the drop and levelled again. It actually felt like we were flying normally. That helped to subside the panic – although you could hear some people crying. There were a lot of families on board with little kids and the rest of us were businessmen. We kind of kept to ourselves so you could hear some sniffling but not the same level of worry that followed the explosion.
More time passed (there was 45 minutes between the explosion and our crash-landing) and the captain, Captain Haynes, came on the PA system and said that they had very little control of the plane, we were in a dangerous position, and we were going to crash-land.
He told us he didn’t want anybody planning on landing safely and walking off totally unscathed. He told us it was going to be rough – rougher than anything we’d ever been through – and we had to be ready. That’s when we our fears were realised – but I do think it was healthy for him to warn us as best he could. (The crew were outstanding too. I don’t know if they could have been any better).
I remember telling myself this is it for me, this is my time to go. People don’t survive these kinds of things. I didn’t know any plane crash survivors – usually everybody dies. At least that’s what I had heard. I wasn’t spiritual at the time, but I found myself praying. The prayer was to take care of my wife, give her comfort and let her move on from this tragedy. It wasn’t a prayer to save me.
In the last five minutes before we hit, I remember telling myself: “If there’s a crash and you die, you can’t do anything – but if you survive, don’t panic, don’t flee, help other people stay calm”. Thinking that really helped.
When the plane landed, it was chaotic.
I don’t think any of us were ready for how hard we would hit. It felt like we dropped out of the sky, which is pretty much what we did with that airspeed and that rate of descent. Bodies were thrown about, some still strapped in their chairs because the chairs had come loose. Others had been thrown from their seats. There was smoke and fire and debris.
The plane slid about 1,500 feet, then we flipped and cartwheeled, which meant sliding another 4,000 feet upside down and backwards. It was well over a mile from start to finish – about a minute and a half of sliding down that runway.
I wasn’t hurt seriously. I had my forehead wedged into the back of the seat in front of me with my arms crossed – I’d taken the brace position – and my seat and seat belt had stayed intact. I was looking around and seeing all this chaos and waiting for pain, but it never came.
When I came to halt, there was nobody around me. I told myself that there were probably some dead people nearby. I unbuckled my seat belt and dropped to the ceiling – we were upside down. I looked back and mine was the only seat still attached. Most of the people around me had indeed died.
Smoke was coming from the front of the plane to the back. I encountered a couple other guys like myself who weren’t hurt seriously and we just tried to get as many people away from the smoke as we could. We then found an opening to the sunlight outside. I realised that we’d landed in a cornfield.
I heard a baby crying inside the wreckage. When I heard that, I didn’t weigh the risks. I didn’t think about what would happen if I got back on that plane and it exploded. I certainly didn’t think “I’ll go back in and come out a hero”. It just happened. I heard her and the next thing I was back inside the plane.
The baby had been thrown 10 or 15 rows from her family. I took her far away from the wreckage, thinking it might explode, and gave her to a woman so I could go back and help others. I handed that baby over and completely forgot about her for about eight hours. There were so many people hurt.
It was only at midnight that night, I saw her dad doing a TV interview and she was sitting on his lap and it all came back to me. She had the same little blue dress on as when I grabbed her.
But the person who had been on my mind most that whole time? My friend Jay. I started looking for him and he wasn’t at any nearby hospitals. He wasn’t at the airport either. The next day, I realised he was a fatality. When I think back on the crash, the one thing I think about more than anything is that he could have been on an earlier flight but chose to wait with me.
The next day, United offered to take me back to Denver – so I went. I remember nothing about that flight back. I’d slept (I was so tired from not sleeping at all the night of the crash), which was the best thing that could have happened, because it took away any anxiety I could have had.
In the year after the crash, it was really hard for me. I had a lot of PTSD, which I’d never heard of before. I was totally functional, but I was just in a daze a lot. I would have a lot of nightmares. I flashed back to the crash a lot.
There was a little boy sitting three feet in front of me, a year and a half old, who died. I had a lot of trouble trying to figure out why an 18-month-old died when I survived. I wrestled with that for a long time.
I did a little bit of counselling but not a whole lot. I just felt like I was seeking peace. I kept asking: Why did this have to happen? Why was I on this flight? Why did everybody around me – including the guy on my left, a woman across the aisle, the guy behind me and that little boy in front – die? I’d ask that every day. And then one day I woke up and realised I would never have that answer. It was never going to make sense. Once I’d accepted that, I stopped asking the question so often.
About a year after the crash, I became a Christian. It changed everything. It took away a lot of that tension and anxiety and gave me a calm and a peace that I’ve lived with the last 35 years. I came to the conclusion that I just had to trust God.
My wife and I got divorced a couple of years ago, but we coped as best as we could. I always felt like it was really important for my kids to know exactly what happened. I remember telling them that if they ever had questions about the crash, I would always be happy to answer them. My wife and I were very cognisant of not hiding it. That really helped.
I wrote a book called Chosen to Live, which was good therapy. It was hard to go back and relive some of this stuff, but it was at the same time, I think really good for my mental health.
I still hear from some of the the survivors. In the first couple of years after, a group of about 15 or 20 of us met either in person or on the phone on a monthly basis – we just felt like we had to be together. Those numbers dissipated but I’m still really good friends with some survivors and family members of people who died. Both groups have been a blessing.
I look at life so differently now. I see how fortunate I was to survive, and not just survive, but without any serious or lasting injuries. I feel really lucky that I got a second chance at life when 112 people didn’t. Everybody dies eventually, but not everybody really lives. And I wanted to really live after that plane crash.
Now, I feel like I have lived. I realised my dream as a broadcaster. I wanted to work in the NBA and major league baseball. I’ve done both of those and been really blessed with my career, two kids and three grandkids.
I’m also a cyclist, which I took up after the crash. It was really good therapy and it eventually led to me doing long distance events and races. In 2015, I won the 3,000-mile Race Across America with a relay partner, which is a really big deal. They call it the toughest bicycle race in the world and I was able to do that.
It has become easier to talk about, especially as time goes on. I don’t think you ever forget – no one ever goes through an experience like we did and forgets. But for me it’s probably a healthy reminder. When I see plane crashes, especially lately, I just am reminded how lucky I am how fortunate I was to survive mine and be able to carry on.
Comments
Leave a Comment