Richard A. Dwyer
Coming across your website revived a host of memories as well as the suspicion that since December 29, 1972 I have lived on borrowed time. That Fall we had successfully opened the Tamiami campus of Florida International University where I was the first chairman of the English department. My colleague Harry Antrim and I had gone to New York city for the annual meeting of the Modern Language Association where we held nonstop interviews of prospective faculty for our fledgling school. Gratified by our success in attracting such candidates as the promising young writer James Hall, we decided to reward ourselves with a seafood dinner before catching our return flight to Miami on Eastern's 401 out of Kennedy. But we lingered too long over the gloriously messy crab and lobster feast and arrived at the gate just as that plane was pulling away from the terminal. The attendants got us onto the next flight, also an L-1011, which was leaving shortly with an intermediate stop at Fort Lauderdale. Everthing was fine until the stewardesses reboarded after our stop. They seemed very agitated as we approached Miami and gathered at the rear windows as we looped out west over the Everglades before making our final turn for the airport. Below we could see a helicopter and scattered fires glowing in the sea of darkness and listened to the stewardesses weeping softly in the galley. It wasn't until I got out of the confusion of the terminal and home to the television that I learned the emerging story of flight 401. Harry and I had a solemn conference at school the following day and many occasions afterward to count our blessings and muse on the unlucky stars the flightcrew must have seen reflected in the looming blackness of the Glades.
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