I originally posted something similar to this over at CatastropheCast.com, but thought it should go here as well…
I’m not only a regular business traveler, but I’m an airline geek as well. I have been my whole life; when other 7 or 8 year olds wanted to be astronauts and firemen, I wanted to be an NTSB aircraft crash investigator. Seriously.
But I digress.
There’s something to be said about paying proper respect to those that deserve it. It’s something nice, but doesn’t get done that often. For example, did you know that one of the most horrific, largest loss of life airplane crashes on United States soil was American Airlines Flight 191, a DC10 that crashed in Chicago back in 1979? There were 273 souls lost in that crash. But as for a monument or memorial for these people? It didn’t happen. Not until a group of schoolkids got together and did a 2 year project, raising funds for it. The memorial didn’t officially exist until 2011.
Another noteworthy crash, the crash of Continental Airlines flight 11, en route from Chicago to Kansas City to Los Angeles, happened in 1962. The crash is noteworthy because it was the first time a jet (not turboprop) plane was brought down as an act of terrorism; a man bought a life insurance policy and then blew up the plane with 6 sticks of dynamite, the result of which started the era of passenger screening that we all yammer on about to this day. But that crash didn’t have any type of memorial, either. Not until fifty years later, when 100 people – including the surviving family members of victims and other townsfolk – gathered in Unionville, Missouri, and dedicated the memorial on May, 2012 on the 50th anniversary of the crash.
We owe these people something. Something more than they’ve gotten. For every significant crash (and where possible), these people shouldn’t be forgotten to history. They should be honored, because their lives were not lost in vain; their lives, and the subsequent loss, has reshaped all of our histories.