Free Flight 232: A Story of Disaster and Survival by Laurence Gonzales Page A

a practice that he had undertaken in 1972 and had continued daily for seventeen years.
    “So, the dialogue before I go into meditation on the plane went like this,” he recalled. “In a conversation with myself: You can die on this plane. I would like to see my children grow up.” He had heard people talk about praying to Jesus, and he thought, “ You had better pray to Jesus. I am with Maharaji this lifetime. You had better pray. I have something better than prayer. And then I go into meditation.”
    He told me, “Within every human being—every human being—there is a place inside where there is no fear. And so I touched that place.” He closed his eyes and went into a meditative trance. When he came out of it a few minutes later, “There’s no fear for me. You hear what’s going on, you understand what’s going on,” he said. All the passengers in first class were adults, but from the coach cabin, Griffin could hear young mothers wailing, “What should I do with my baby?”
    “It was the worst part of the flight,” he said. “And the answer is: Put them between your feet. Because you can’t hang onto them. And you feel that you can’t do anything to help them. That’s a terrible feeling. But at the same time, there’s no anxiety for me. There’s no adrenaline for me. But I was very aware of what was going on. And I knew I could die on that plane.”
    When Griffin saw Dvorak rush past him, he turned and watched him go. He lost sight of him as the pilot faded down the aisle into B-Zone. Dvorak passed Garry Priest, who was trying to comfort Linda Pierce across the aisle. When the engine blew, the plane had not only lost a third of its thrust but also produced an instant wind brake from the drag of the dead engine. That’s why the tail dropped so sharply. And that’s why Priest, whose seat belt was loose, “ended up almost tucked under the seat in front of me where your carry-on little bag is supposed to go. Seat belt up around my armpits as I slid forward in my seat.”
    Dvorak passed Sister Mary Viannea Karpinski, the Felician nun who had been brought aboard in a wheelchair ahead of the other passengers. She was feeding her red rosary beads through her fingers, praying rapidly, softly, in both English and Polish. He passed Clif Marshall, production manager for a company in the livestock industry. With the help of Ron Sheldon, two seats to his left, Marshall would save eight lives: Terri Hardman and her two teenagers, Sheli and Ryan; Gitte Skaanes, an exchange student on her way home to Norway; Lawrence Hjermstad and his two children, Alisa, eight, and Eric, eleven; and Aki Muto, nineteen, the tall Japanese girl with the pale and beautiful features of a doll.
    Dvorak rushed away into C-Zone past Jerry Schemmel and an ex-Navy fighter pilot named Charles Martz, who sat with an eighty-year-old ex-Navy nurse, Luella Neubacher. Dvorak passed Jay Ramsdell on his left and Tony Feeney on his right, then a handsome young man in his twenties, who would require an electroencephalogram to determine if he was dead or alive, and twenty-two-year-old Elaine Asay. Her tattoo of a bunny would assist the forensic team in identifying her.
    Dvorak came into view of Yisroel Brownstein and Richard Howard Sudlow and stopped short of the 4-Right exit, the last door in the tail of the plane. For years afterward, he would have dreams in which all those people around him would rise up before him. In his dreams, they were all his friends. Dvorak looked outside. He “ had to hold onto the seats . . . to steady himself against the movements of the aircraft,” according to testimony by an investigator. He saw the damage to the elevator and the horizontal stabilizer. Susan White saw him and called to him and pointed out the damage on the other side. Dvorak took her arm, pulled her close, and looked deep into her eyes. She felt that he was saying his last good-bye. Then he hurried back to the cockpit.

CHAPTER FOUR
    G eneral