The 258 passengers who boarded American Airlines Flight 191 at O’Hare International Airport on May 25, 1979, were traveling for a variety of reasons. Some, who attended work meetings in Chicago, were rushing back to California before Memorial Day weekend. Others were excited to get to Los Angeles — the flight’s terminus — to attend a booksellers convention. Couples were heading to tropical getaways and a few more were set to surprise loved ones.
None would reach their destinations.
Just a few minutes after 3 p.m., the DC-10 carrying them and 13 members of the San Diego-based crew lost its left engine, which broke away and vaulted over the aircraft’s wing. The plane continued to rise, its wings level, despite the nearly 13,500 pounds suddenly missing from its left side. But as it reached 300 feet, the plane slowed and rolled left until it began to overturn, its nose tipping down. The aircraft crashed just 31 seconds into its flight. The 271 people aboard the plane and two more on the ground were killed. In an instant several immediate families were gone.
Forty-five years later, Flight 191 remains the deadliest passenger airline accident on U.S. soil.
The victims were a cross-section of America — smart, funny, kind, brave, loving and hardworking. That’s how their family and friends remember them. Each year they gather to celebrate their lost loved ones whose names are inscribed on bricks in a special Flight 191 Memorial at Lake Park in Des Plaines — just down the road from the crash site. A special ceremony will take place there starting at 2 p.m. May 25.
Here are a few of their stories with many more available on the Tribune’s virtual memorial.
Michael Adduci is the brother of Kathleen Adduci, a nursing student from Homewood who was taking a vacation to Hawaii after calling off her wedding. He was 20 when the crash happened, and now lives in Camden, Michigan, after retiring from Metra:
Kathy was supposed to get married and the date was set for June 2 of that year, but it was called off. To take her mind off the wedding, my mom talked her into going to Hawaii with two other friends. They were Gail DeCastro and Rhonda DeYoung, who also perished. We ended up in church on the 2nd of June for Kathy — for her funeral.
She was a sweet and beautiful sister who had many friends. She was studying to be a nurse at South Suburban College at the time of the accident and needed a break from school and the heartbreak of the wedding being called off. I remember she had just bought a new Pontiac Firebird and I went with her to sign the papers and bring it home. She was so proud of it.
The devastation of the accident affected my family way beyond 1979. My mom was in remission from breast cancer and three months after the accident her cancer came back and she passed away in 1981. My father was heartbroken over losing two loved ones and committed suicide in 1997.
What I didn’t realize until the (memorial’s) dedication was there were families there who lost up to five family members at once. Now, that’s devastation, isn’t it?
Kim Jockl and Melody Smith are the daughters of Bill and Corrine Borchers, a North Side couple who were traveling to Hawaii for a vacation. Jockl and Smith, who were 23 and 32 at the time of the crash, later helped to create the memorial in Des Plaines:
JOCKL: I was living at home, and I left the day before (Flight 191) for Acapulco because I was graduating from Northeastern Illinois University. United was on strike, so flights kept getting canceled and moved. My parents ended up getting tickets through a travel agency, Tartan Travel.
Everyone who died was a hero’: 40 years after American Airlines Flight 191 crashed near O’Hare, families reflect on those lost
My mom said, “There’s been too many changes. I’ve got a bad feeling about this.” And we were like, “Go! It’s going to be great.”
SMITH: My husband stopped in a grocery store and heard on the TV that there was a crash. When we walked in our house, the phone was ringing. It was my mother-in-law asking what time my parents got on the flight. I didn’t think it was American Airlines. The last I heard, it was Braniff. I called the airline, and they just took my name.
Then I remembered Tartan Travel. I got hold of someone walking out the door. He called me about five minutes later and said, yes, they were scheduled for that flight.
The 26-year-old left his graduate work at the Illinois Institute of Technology to take a job as a computer technologist. He was traveling from Illinois to California to interview with Hughes Aircraft Co. These memories are from his sister, Yen Chun:
He was brilliant beyond his years, but one would have never guessed given how humble he was. His kindness made him everyone’s favorite person and he never let life’s setbacks stop him from achieving his dream. If he had more years with us, there’s no doubt he would have been a brilliant leader in cutting-edge technology.
Ping was born in Beijing, China, in 1952, to American parents from Hawaii. At age 1.5, Ping contracted polio, which permanently impacted both of his legs. While the polio created challenges for him — forced him to walk with crutches and braces his whole life, pushed him back two years in school, prevented him from playing with other children — he always found the silver lining in every situation. When we all played outdoors, he would stay inside and read books or take apart clocks or radios. He enrolled in my school and became friends with all my friends. He couldn’t use his legs so instead he became an archer, a diver and a swimmer. But perhaps most importantly, I don’t ever remember him complaining about his disability once.