Free Highest Duty by Chesley B. Sullenberger Page A

was a large outdoor fire pit. I held tight to Lorrie’s hand and enjoyed all of it.
    When I go over that day in my mind, I think of the girls, but I also think about Lorrie. I know what a loving mother she is. Yes, I’ve tried my best to instill values in the girls, to help them find more reasons to care about each other. But Lorrie is on the front line, nurturing them, setting an example, being there for them day and night when I am far away. I marvel at how she has created such a wonderful home life for our family.
    I am fortunate to be her husband, and to have her as the mother of my children.
     
    J ULY 6, 1936, is a red-letter day for me, and not just because it’s the day federal air traffic control began operation under the Bureau of Air Commerce.
    Yes, I’m taken with the history, but that day stands out for me on a more personal level. Fifty years later, on July 6, 1986, a fiftieth-anniversary celebration was held at the Oakland Air Route Traffic Control Center in Fremont, California. Organizers invited the public to tour the facility, to see where controllers direct the flow of air traffic over Northern California. Pacific Southwest Airlines agreed to send over a pilot and a flight attendant to talk to the guests, and I was asked to be the pilot on hand.
    I had flown a red-eye the night before, as a first officer, so I’dbeen up a lot of hours and was pretty beat. But I was more than happy to explain how pilots interact with air traffic control.
    The flight attendant who had been selected to join me got sick and couldn’t come. So PSA sent over a vivacious twenty-seven-year-old from its marketing department, a young woman I had never met before. She told me her name was Lorrie Henry, and I introduced myself.
    “Hi, I’m Sully Sullenberger.”
    I have an uncommon name that she must not have heard clearly, and she never asked me to repeat myself. So that entire day, she didn’t know how to address me. She just knew I had a lot of S s and L s in my name.
    Lorrie will tell you it wasn’t love at first sight. Despite my pilot’s uniform, I looked tired, and she noticed my eyes were bloodshot and I wasn’t freshly shaved. And she kept thinking: What’s this guy’s name again?
    At the time, Lorrie had sworn off dating. She’d had a few relationships she considered unhealthy, and had told herself she was taking a break from men. I was thirty-five years old, had been in a short, childless marriage, and I wasn’t exactly looking for long-term love either. But I was taken with Lorrie. She was attractive—tall and elegant, with a great smile—and she seemed smart, too. She was very engaging with all the passersby. Pretty quickly after meeting her, I knew I wanted to ask her out.
    For about four hours, we stood next to each other greeting the public beside a large model of a PSA aircraft, the BAe-146. A lot of people who came by wanted to share tales of their most memorable PSA flights.
    Lorrie wasn’t at all flirtatious toward me, and I also remained professional toward her. But I was waiting for my moment. As the event wound down, I said to her, “Why don’t we go get a drink?”
    “There’s a commissary down the hall,” she told me. “If you’re looking for a vending machine, you can find one there.”
    She wasn’t getting it, but I wasn’t giving up just yet. “I meant a cocktail,” I said. “In a bar.”
    She looked at me, this weary pilot with a lot of S s and L s in his name and a confusing opening line, and I suppose a part of her took pity on me. She agreed to accompany me to a nearby Ben-nigan’s. We had that drink, talked for a bit, and as she’d later admit, there wasn’t any wild attraction on her part. She assumed she’d never see me again. But I was interested. I asked for her phone number and she gave me her PSA business card, which had only the 800 number on it for the airline’s marketing department.
    I tried to be clever. “You must be in great demand,” I said, “if you