Thursday, July 17, 2008

Death don't have no mercy

12 years ago today TWA Flight 800 exploded in mid-air and crashed into the waters of the Atlantic Ocean off of the coast of New York.

I was a high school student attending a music festival that day. I came home after the festival and went to bed, only learning of the crash the next morning on the front page of the newspaper. Later that day I found out that the parents of two of my friends (they were twins) were on that plane, bound for a happy parents only vacation to Paris.

Over the years since high school we've lost touch but on this day my thoughts always return to that horrible crash and the effect it had on that family. God bless the families of all of the Flight 800 victims.

In a bizarre twist on the bill at that music festival was the band Hot Tuna, they performed a haunting version of "Death Don't Have No Mercy" but I don't think any of us realized just how prescient that song selection was.

2 comments:

Andrew Oh-Willeke said...

Sometimes death is a mercy, but almost never in plane crashes. IIRC, there were originally concerns that the crash might be a terrorist incident, but later investigation proved it to be an accident.

Your personal connection to the accident seems like something out of novel or a movie. Thanks for reminding us that we're talking about real people here and not just numbers in accident statistics.

Steve Balboni said...

Thanks Andrew. You remember correctly, it was at first thought to be a terrorist attack. There are still conspiracy theorists convinced that it was actually shot down accidentally by the Navy.

http://www.cnn.com/US/9703/13/twa/