I Saw the Colonel Cry

From Anne Manning Booher, commenting on an article written July 18, 2000, in the Tampa Tribune, “A Defining Moment” about the fatal crash of a B-52 in Puerto Rico.

Col. Porterfield took my father’s crew that day in order to get his flight time in.  They were flying touch-and-go landings.  My father and I walked outside because he wanted to watch his crew come and we watched the plane crash.  I watched my dad age 20 years in 5 minutes time.  I was 16.  My dad’s name was still on the flight manifest and the entire base, with the exception of the crew members and their families, and my family thought my father had been killed. 

It was my first exposure to death and is a scar I will carry with me as long as I live.  Col. Porterfield had a wing job and flew seldom.  Unfortunately, the accident cause was placed squarely on his shoulders and as a result, there were some substantial changes made in the way SAC allowed Sr. staff to get their flight time in.  It was a very close crew, as B-52 crews often are – the navigator had 4 small children under 6 years of age, with a 5th on the way.  I babysat for them regularly and he was my math tutor. The gunner’s daughter and I were friends.  Donny Porterfield and I had dated occasionally and were part of the same group of friends.  Ken Slatter, who was also on the crew, was the first black cadet to graduate from Annapolis.

The plane, by the way, did not land in the housing area backyards.  They clipped a fence that blocked the runway from a park/play area.  Everyone on board was burned beyond recognition, with the exception of Capt. Fetterer (who had the 4.5 kids).  For whatever reason he was thrown clear.  As you can imagine, the stories that went around were horrific.  It was a dreadful, dreadful time and particularly hard on my Dad.  It was the first and probably the only time ever I saw the Colonel cry.

The only good thing that came out of it was that I got to tell a biology teacher we all loathed to go to hell in the middle of his classroom and the HS principal backed me up.  I walked into class and the schmuck got all over me about “what the heck I was doing there when my dad died the night before”.  I can remember very calmly telling him that he had his facts wrong.  The guy about blew a gasket that I had had the audacity to contradict him, in front of anyone and told me that since I was so smart and my father didn’t die, I could sit down, shut my mouth, and get to work.  Then he made a very tasteless remark about pilots.  At that point, I got up and told him I was leaving, that I didn’t have to listen to that.  A number of my friends told him he was the one who needed to shut up and sit down and learn what military families were all about.  He nearly busted a gut and said he’d be talking to the principal and I’d be severely punished for insubordination.  At that point, I informed him that the principal’s office was my next destination.  By the time this idiot got there, Mr. Shealy, our principal, had sent a bunch of us home and I guess the teacher got the dressing down of his life.  Needless to say, his contract wasn’t renewed the next year.