Nothing seemed to work that night.

Air Florida Flight 90 bound for Tampa with its ice-laden wings had attempted to take off in a blinding snowstorm from National Airport. Instead of being comfortably airborne, it crashed into the 14th Street Bridge, resulting in 74 fatalities. Almost simultaneously, a Metro train derailed resulting in the death of three passengers.  It was truly the afternoon and night from hell.

The Washington Post in those pre-internet days of shoe leather beat reporters was on it.  Indeed, an army of reporters was quickly deployed to cover the story. I was among the cast of thousands called on to get out of the office and get to the scene as best I could.

It was still snowing — it had been all day — and dark as I trudged out towards the 14th Street Bridge but could not quite reach it. I could report what little I could see, with, well before cell phones, the walkie-talkie the Post had provided me with.  But the damn contraption did not work.  This was well before 9/11 sealed off all federal buildings for security reasons.  So I was able to enter a nearby government building, find a pay phone and call the desk.

The crash occurred in the late afternoon of Jan. 13, 1982, so it was big front page news in the next day’s paper. Other important news keyed from an “INSIDE” box at the bottom right of the front page.  But the lede story was highlighted with a two-tier banner headline that read:

71 Feared Dead as Plane Hits Bridge,

Smashes Cars, Plunges Into Potomac

Consider that the most recent collision of an American Airlines passenger plane and an Army helicopter happened shortly before 9 p.m. and the story made only the lower right hand corner of the front page in the next day’s print newspaper.  It was a mere 10 paragraphs long, which apparently took 5 staffers (four bylines and one also contributing) to compile. Of course, two days later, the crash was the front page banner headline: “Disaster in Crowded Skies.” Then came five inside pages of pictures and text with many more contributors.

The one hero that emerged from that earlier disaster was Lenny Skutnick, a federal worker who was standing on the riverbank nearby and dove into the icy Potomac to save one of the five survivors of the 79 on board.  President Reagan invited him to his first State of the Union speech on January 26. Whatever opinion one held of Reagan, he was the consoler-in-chief. He did not turn the tragedy into political theater.   In the moment the old actor rose to the role he had seemingly been born to play.

Two days after the crash, I shared a front page byline with my Washington Post colleague Sandra Boodman with information about the victims and their families. Jane Burka was going to visit her sick mother. Chalmers McIlwaine Jr. was flying to Tampa on business. And so on. “For some, the flight was the start of a vacation and a respite from winter,” we wrote.

It’s notable to recall that ten other “also contributing” reporters were listed in italics at the end of the story. They were Michel McQueen (now Michel Martin, host of NPR’s Morning Edition), Joseph D. Whitaker, Lawrence Feinberg, Alice Bonner, Molly Moore, Molly Sinclair, Leon Wynter, Don Nunes, Ronald D. White and Jura Koncius.  The Post‘s local staff then was robust.  In such tragedies, we did ourselves — and the newspaper — proud.

My work on this story was not over.  I spent a week with the family of one of the victims, Susan Corbin Fusco, a 53-year old kindergarten teacher. Her husband Gene had somehow recovered her wedding ring.  “Shattered Lives: Kin Bury Plane Crash Victim” was the headline on my front-page story of Jan. 22, 1982. As a reporter, you are supposed to park your emotions at the proverbial door, to be a detached, cold-hearted observer and stenographer of the facts, just the facts.  But for me this was one of the toughest assignments to report dispassionately.

Over the eight days and nights since the crash, I rode the roller coaster of emotions with Gene and his children as they went “from initial shock over their loss, to anger at news reports that they felt did not do her justice, to anguish over how she died and resignation that should she would never return to the three-bedroom rambler, to a poodle named Bambi, a 16-year old so named Adam, a 22-yer old married daughter, Pamela Farrell, and the husband who had driven her to the airport last Wednesday.”

During the week I spent with the family, through Susan’s burial in the Maryland Veterans Cemetery in southern Prince George’s County, I mostly watched and listened to Gene reflect on the life and tragic death of  the woman to whom he’d been married for almost 31 years. He even showed me their marital bed. “That’s the side Sue slept on,” he said.  “I don’t think I’ll ever sleep on that  side.”  I hoped that my presence was not intrusive but to some extent helpful, as Gene shared so much with me (and ultimately my readers) about his wife. I tried but could not always hold back tears.

At the time, my son Eric had just turned eleven.  He is now a commercial airline pilot.

The Washington Post, Jan. 14, 1982