I
knew
what was going on. I knew I wasn’t just suffering from
slight
head injuries. And I was afraid it wasn’t temporary.
Even though my injuries were serious, no one told me
how
serious. Their initial assessment was that I had broken a few bones.
Well, I might have only one good eye, but I could see that it was more than just a few broken bones.
What
isn’t
broken
? I wondered.
Why isn’t anyone telling me the truth?
I could take the truth. What I couldn’t take was the fear of not knowing how bad it was.
My room overlooked the Ventura Freeway, and with my one good eye I watched the cars speed by. I watched and then I wept. I wept for the people inside the cars.
I couldn’t understand it, but those people mattered to me. Each and every one of them mattered. Even though I didn’t know their names. The type of car they drove didn’t matter. My head wasn’t turned if it was a Porsche. And it wasn’t turned away if it was a Rambler. None of that mattered anymore. It was the person behind the wheel that mattered. Their final destination mattered. Their spiritual destination. And it mattered like nothing else I had ever experienced.
These people need to know about God,
I remember thinking.
Not some vague, warm and fuzzy, feel-good concept of God. They need to know the one
true
God. Those people may think they know where they are going today, but the truth is that most of them are lost. They need to know Jesus Christ, need to know how much He loves them, what He did for them to pave the way to eternity. They can’t get there by any road, no matter how smooth it is or how attractive the scenery is along the way. He is the way, the only way. They need Him.
My thoughts surprised me.
My feelings surprised me even more.
I wept for these people, these people I didn’t know who were on their way to somewhere else and in such a hurry to get there.
I stared at the ceiling, dumbfounded.
What has happened to me? I’ve never thought these thoughts before, never felt these feelings before.
I wasn’t the same person I was before the crash. Somehow the answer had to be related to those three days in a coma.
It had to be.
If I could only remember . . . something . . . anything . . .
6
SHRINE TO AVIATION
Because of all the painkillers
in my bloodstream, sleep came and went during all hours of the day and night. One day seemed to blend into the next without my being aware of the passage of time.
At some point I began to think about who I was. I didn’t focus on all that had happened, things I couldn’t remember; I focused on all that
was
happening. To me. Everything about me seemed different. Physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually.
I felt like the six-million-dollar man. Remember the TV show? He had been in some kind of tragic accident, and the military completely rebuilt him. That’s
exactly
what I felt like. Parts of me were definitely me. But parts of me definitely weren’t. Who was this new Dale Black?
I thought it was time to take a look.
There was a mirror inside the tray next to my bed. I hadn’t bothered to use it before; now I felt compelled to. I pulled the cord to call the nurse. She moved the tray over my bed and lifted the mirror for me.
The startled expressions on some of the faces of visitors seeing me for the first time somewhat prepared me. But nothing could have prepared me for the monster in the mirror.
My hair had been completely shaved off. My head was red and purple, swollen, and bandaged. A crooked railroad line of stitches ran across my forehead and below the bandage over my right eye. One especially nasty gash ran roughshod across my face and chin, held together with gnarly-looking stitches. My nose had been broken and was flat, as if it had been mashed down by some irrepressible force. And burns from the airplane fuel had swollen my skin, discoloring it and distorting it hideously.
This was no six-million-dollar man staring back at me. This was Frankenstein’s monster—the work of a mad scientist—an utterly grotesque assemblage of parts, held together by wires and screws, stitches and bandages, rods and plaster casts.
I didn’t even look human. I certainly bore no resemblance to the young man with a bright future ahead of him who had boarded that ill-fated plane. The injuries were so severe, the burns so pervasive, the gashes so deep, that all hope for a somewhat normal appearance left me. This was not the kind of thing that cleared up in a few months of bed rest. This was horrifying. This was permanent. This was me.
Now I knew why my brother had thrown up.
I was surprised more people hadn’t.
Body building, one of my favorite pastimes, was definitely out. I couldn’t even lift my arms. And what about baseball and football? It would be a real surprise if I ever walked again. Forget about diving to catch a pass or going after a hard-hit ground ball. It was over.
I was forever being examined, X-rayed, probed, and injected. An entourage of doctors came through, discussing my case among themselves, asking each other questions and talking about me in the third person as if I weren’t in the room.
Results from the tests trickled in, but none of them trickled down to me. I was left in the dark. No one told me the extent of my injuries or the prognosis for my recovery.
Then, finally, after a week of tests, Dr. Graham came to my room and talked to me about the results. “When you first arrived in the hospital after the accident,” he said, “we assumed your internal injuries to be severe. And we were particularly concerned about your head injuries and potential brain damage.”
As I mentioned before, Dr. Graham was a renowned orthopedic surgeon. I learned from the hospital staff that he was known as the doctor of the stars, having treated a number of celebrities. His best-known patient was Evel Knievel, whose fame was built around daredevil stunts with his motorcycle—everything from jumping over a world’s record number of cars to jumping over the Snake River Canyon.
Dr. Graham continued: “I’m aware of the fact that you’re still experiencing memory loss, but everything else with regard to your brain looks pretty good. Though we don’t understand why, we see no indication of internal injuries. Most of your injuries are related to bone, ligament, and muscle problems. That’s
good
news. Anyway, I’ve talked with your parents and we’re going to let you go home tomorrow.”
Tomorrow!
I thought.
That’s a miracle! The original estimate was eight months! And I’m going home in eight days?!
I was stunned.
Later that day my parents and my brother Don arrived. They were overjoyed at the news. And they were fully committed to whatever it took—however long—for me to recover.
“You know, Dale,” my dad said, “one big reason this is possible is because your mom has decided to take a leave of absence from the family business so she can take care of you full time.”
My brother chimed in with his characteristic sense of wry humor. “And don’t worry, Dale, we’ve hired three drivers to take your place at the plant.”
I laughed. And boy did it hurt. My face, my ribs, everything hurt. But a laugh never felt so good.
When I woke up the next morning, my first thought was
I’m getting out of here! I’m going home!
I could hardly wait. The check-out procedures took forever, but a nurse finally arrived with a wheelchair and painstakingly worked me into it.
As my brother wheeled me down the hallway, I asked my dad, “Would you mind driving by the place where the plane crashed? I’d like to see what it looks like.”
Dad was walking to my left; my mom, to the right. Neither said a word.
My brother broke the silence: “Are you sure you can handle that right now? It’s only been a little over a week since the crash.”
“Yeah. I’d really like to see it for myself.” And then I said, trying to reassure them, “I’ll be OK.”
“Alright, Dale,” Dad said with a sigh, “if you’re sure.”
No sooner were the words out of my mouth than I wondered if I
would
be OK. Wondered what it would be like seeing the grim monolith that was the face of death for Chuck and Gene. Wondered what memories would come back.
Feared
what memories would come back.
When we were finally outside the hospital, the warmth of the morning sun was the first thing I felt. It seemed as if I had been in an artificially lit cave for the past eight days, with artificially cooled air mingled with smells of all things sterile. I took a deep breath of fresh air. It brought life . . . and hope.
I was out of the hospital and on my way to recovery. However hard it would be, however long it would take, I was on my way. And it felt great.
As they wheeled me to the car and settled me into the front seat, I took a final look at the hospital. A well of emotions rose to the surface. So much had happened there in just a week. So much death. So much life. So many experiences. So many changes.
We drove north on Hollywood Way from St. Joseph toward Hollywood-Burbank Airport. The cemetery lay just south of it. We turned on a tiny street called Valhalla Drive, which came to an abrupt dead end.
“There’s the mausoleum ahead of us, Dale.” Dad parked the car along the curb.
I strained with my good eye to focus on the concrete-and-marble domed building that rose seven stories high. It was a drab structure surrounded by a black fence. I don’t know what I was expecting, but it wasn’t this. I was told we had hit a monument in the center of the cemetery, and I had imagined a large tombstone of some kind or a small mausoleum for a family. I wasn’t prepared for anything this size. It was huge. More than huge, it was massive.
None of us got out of the car. None of us spoke. For several minutes we sat in silence, until at last my brother made a comment.
“Except for the engines and the tail, you could have picked up any piece of that airplane with one hand,” he explained in a voice barely above a whisper.
Dad raised his arm and pointed. “Your plane sheered off those trees just before impact. Apparently, that’s what turned your plane into the monument.” He pointed to the crater in the concrete dome, just five feet from the top. “The damage to the air memorial is minor compared to your aircraft. They haven’t even finished cleaning up everything yet,” he said, indicating the debris on the ground.
What was left of the plane had been removed. I could see gouges in the ground where the plane had dug in. Then I noticed the gilded letters on the side of the memorial:
PORTAL OF THE FOLDED WINGS
The scene spun in my head, and turbulent emotions surged within me, followed by a series of questions:
What is wrong with my memory? Why can’t I remember this? How does someone forget something so huge? What really happened barely a week ago?
Then the big question, the one that loomed over me like some haunting apparition:
Why was I the only survivor?
I couldn’t sort it all out. My mind hurt. It felt as if it were going to explode. I started to panic, and so I took slow, deep breaths to stave off the attack. I hung my head, noticing the grass for the first time. It was dingy and ugly, browned by the scorch of the mid-summer sun. I looked up again. The monument looked old and a little dingy itself, having weathered decades of summer suns.
I couldn’t stop looking at the structure, marveling at it, wondering about it. I was drawn to it in ways I couldn’t understand, like a curious insect drawn to a glowing bulb.
The irony was impossible not to notice—this memorial to deceased aviators had taken the lives of two more. Inside the structure were plaques to their memory. Outside, where Chuck and Gene had died, there were no plaques.
I had flown over it scores of times. Even that seemed mysterious to me. A sense of destiny came over me as I sat there in the car staring. It was intriguing. At the same time it was indicting. I felt as if it were taunting me somehow. As we sat at the end of Valhalla Drive, everyone had something to say. I was quiet, my mind busy with its own questions, all of which eventually came around to one:
Could it be true that I had caused the crash?
7
DESTINED FOR THE SKY
It was good to be home
. Good to be pampered by my mom instead of the nurses. Not to mention the food. There’s nothing like your mother’s cooking, especially when you’re sick. I ate it up. The food. The pampering. The familiar surroundings. It was wonderful.
I was in a hospital bed, which they had placed in the den. I had lots of time to think, pray, dream. Invariably all my dreams led to one: flying.
I mentioned my dream of becoming an airline pilot began when I was fourteen.