Twenty-five years ago this evening Flight 255 fell from the sky on takeoff from Detroit Metro airport. More than 150 people died. One four year old survived.
Today our hearts are full of compassion and tears for the families who meet at the memorial site, a small island of land along the freeway where their loved ones died.
As one of them said on the news just now – “Healing does not mean forgetting.”
Amen.
About Dawn King
I'm a long time banker, having started in the business at sixteen as a co-op student filing checks in a bank bookkeeping department after school. After 26 years in banking I made a scary decision and went back to grad school to become a librarian. Now that I've graduated and worked at a library for a time I'm facing unemployment again; economic times have created shortages in most of the communities near me. Some people say life is a circle; maybe mine is. I'm headed back to the bank to work. With a fresh perspective on all things financial.
Twenty-five years ago this evening Flight 255 fell from the sky on takeoff from Detroit Metro airport. More than 150 people died. One four year old survived.
There couldn’t be wiser words.
Wow, the four year old is now almost 30.
The families are also survivors. Psychological wounds are much tougher to heal than physical ones.
I hadn’t heard about this incident – but it indeed sad how many lives were changed forever because of it.
Thank you for this tribute, Dawn. Did you know anyone on board this flight? I remember the horror upon hearing about it.
There was a guy from my high school graduating class onboard, but I didn’t know that until much later. I was at the airport about an hour before, flew in from Colorado, drove home, heard about it on the car radio.
We agree, healing does not mean forgetting. To make the world a safer place, we must remember the past.
Life is sad and so tough to get through sometimes.
Beautifully said, Dawn. I didn’t realize you knew someone on the flight.
Here’s an article about the girl who survived and the hospital staff who helped her: http://www.annarbor.com/news/unforgettable-miracle-child-breaks-silence-for-anniversary-of-deadly-flight-255-crash/
I wonder if it’s harder to lose someone in a freak accident, in just an instant, than it is to watch someone fade away with an illness? It can never be easy to lose someone. Probably this was not a good post for me to read this morning – the morning my son is on a plane heading to Oman and my daughter is driving his truck back to Southern California having dropped him at the San Francisco airport. Any mode of travel offers the chance of tragedy – as does getting out of bed in the morning.