Flight to Heaven Read online

  These people need to know about God, I remember thinking. Not some vague, warm and fuzzy, feel-good concept of God. They need to know the one true God. Those people may think they know where they are going today, but the truth is that most of them are lost. They need to know Jesus Christ, need to know how much He loves them, what He did for them to pave the way to eternity. They can’t get there by any road, no matter how smooth it is or how attractive the scenery is along the way. He is the way, the only way. They need Him.

  My thoughts surprised me.

  My feelings surprised me even more.

  I wept for these people, these people I didn’t know who were on their way to somewhere else and in such a hurry to get there.

  I stared at the ceiling, dumbfounded. What has happened to me? I’ve never thought these thoughts before, never felt these feelings before. I wasn’t the same person I was before the crash. Somehow the answer had to be related to those three days in a coma.

  It had to be.

  If I could only remember . . . something . . . anything . . .

  6

  SHRINE TO AVIATION

  Because of all the painkillers in my bloodstream, sleep came and went during all hours of the day and night. One day seemed to blend into the next without my being aware of the passage of time.

  At some point I began to think about who I was. I didn’t focus on all that had happened, things I couldn’t remember; I focused on all that was happening. To me. Everything about me seemed different. Physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually.

  I felt like the six-million-dollar man. Remember the TV show? He had been in some kind of tragic accident, and the military completely rebuilt him. That’s exactly what I felt like. Parts of me were definitely me. But parts of me definitely weren’t. Who was this new Dale Black?

  I thought it was time to take a look.

  There was a mirror inside the tray next to my bed. I hadn’t bothered to use it before; now I felt compelled to. I pulled the cord to call the nurse. She moved the tray over my bed and lifted the mirror for me.

  The startled expressions on some of the faces of visitors seeing me for the first time somewhat prepared me. But nothing could have prepared me for the monster in the mirror.

  My hair had been completely shaved off. My head was red and purple, swollen, and bandaged. A crooked railroad line of stitches ran across my forehead and below the bandage over my right eye. One especially nasty gash ran roughshod across my face and chin, held together with gnarly-looking stitches. My nose had been broken and was flat, as if it had been mashed down by some irrepressible force. And burns from the airplane fuel had swollen my skin, discoloring it and distorting it hideously.

  This was no six-million-dollar man staring back at me. This was Frankenstein’s monster—the work of a mad scientist—an utterly grotesque assemblage of parts, held together by wires and screws, stitches and bandages, rods and plaster casts.

  I didn’t even look human. I certainly bore no resemblance to the young man with a bright future ahead of him who had boarded that ill-fated plane. The injuries were so severe, the burns so pervasive, the gashes so deep, that all hope for a somewhat normal appearance left me. This was not the kind of thing that cleared up in a few months of bed rest. This was horrifying. This was permanent. This was me.

  Now I knew why my brother had thrown up.

  I was surprised more people hadn’t.

  Body building, one of my favorite pastimes, was definitely out. I couldn’t even lift my arms. And what about baseball and football? It would be a real surprise if I ever walked again. Forget about diving to catch a pass or going after a hard-hit ground ball. It was over.

  I was forever being examined, X-rayed, probed, and injected. An entourage of doctors came through, discussing my case among themselves, asking each other questions and talking about me in the third person as if I weren’t in the room.

  Results from the tests trickled in, but none of them trickled down to me. I was left in the dark. No one told me the extent of my injuries or the prognosis for my recovery.

  Then, finally, after a week of tests, Dr. Graham came to my room and talked to me about the results. “When you first arrived in the hospital after the accident,” he said, “we assumed your internal injuries to be severe. And we were particularly concerned about your head injuries and potential brain damage.”

  As I mentioned before, Dr. Graham was a renowned orthopedic surgeon. I learned from the hospital staff that he was known as the doctor of the stars, having treated a number of celebrities. His best-known patient was Evel Knievel, whose fame was built around daredevil stunts with his motorcycle—everything from jumping over a world’s record number of cars to jumping over the Snake River Canyon.

  Dr. Graham continued: “I’m aware of the fact that you’re still experiencing memory loss, but everything else with regard to your brain looks pretty good. Though we don’t understand why, we see no indication of internal injuries. Most of your injuries are related to bone, ligament, and muscle problems. That’s good news. Anyway, I’ve talked with your parents and we’re going to let you go home tomorrow.”

  Tomorrow! I thought. That’s a miracle! The original estimate was eight months! And I’m going home in eight days?! I was stunned.

  Later that day my parents and my brother Don arrived. They were overjoyed at the news. And they were fully committed to whatever it took—however long—for me to recover.

  “You know, Dale,” my dad said, “one big reason this is possible is because your mom has decided to take a leave of absence from the family business so she can take care of you full time.”

  My brother chimed in with his characteristic sense of wry humor. “And don’t worry, Dale, we’ve hired three drivers to take your place at the plant.”

  I laughed. And boy did it hurt. My face, my ribs, everything hurt. But a laugh never felt so good.

  When I woke up the next morning, my first thought was I’m getting out of here! I’m going home!

  I could hardly wait. The check-out procedures took forever, but a nurse finally arrived with a wheelchair and painstakingly worked me into it.

  As my brother wheeled me down the hallway, I asked my dad, “Would you mind driving by the place where the plane crashed? I’d like to see what it looks like.”

  Dad was walking to my left; my mom, to the right. Neither said a word.

  My brother broke the silence: “Are you sure you can handle that right now? It’s only been a little over a week since the crash.”

  “Yeah. I’d really like to see it for myself.” And then I said, trying to reassure them, “I’ll be OK.”

  “Alright, Dale,” Dad said with a sigh, “if you’re sure.”

  No sooner were the words out of my mouth than I wondered if I would be OK. Wondered what it would be like seeing the grim monolith that was the face of death for Chuck and Gene. Wondered what memories would come back.

  Feared what memories would come back.

  When we were finally outside the hospital, the warmth of the morning sun was the first thing I felt. It seemed as if I had been in an artificially lit cave for the past eight days, with artificially cooled air mingled with smells of all things sterile. I took a deep breath of fresh air. It brought life . . . and hope.

  I was out of the hospital and on my way to recovery. However hard it would be, however long it would take, I was on my way. And it felt great.

  As they wheeled me to the car and settled me into the front seat, I took a final look at the hospital. A well of emotions rose to the surface. So much had happened there in just a week. So much death. So much life. So many experiences. So many changes.

  We drove north on Hollywood Way from St. Joseph toward Hollywood-Burbank Airport. The cemetery lay just south of it. We turned on a tiny street called Valhalla Drive, which came to an abrupt dead end.

  “There’s the mausoleum ahead of us, Dale.” Dad parked the car along the curb.

  I strained with my good eye to focus o
n the concrete-and-marble domed building that rose seven stories high. It was a drab structure surrounded by a black fence. I don’t know what I was expecting, but it wasn’t this. I was told we had hit a monument in the center of the cemetery, and I had imagined a large tombstone of some kind or a small mausoleum for a family. I wasn’t prepared for anything this size. It was huge. More than huge, it was massive.

  None of us got out of the car. None of us spoke. For several minutes we sat in silence, until at last my brother made a comment.

  “Except for the engines and the tail, you could have picked up any piece of that airplane with one hand,” he explained in a voice barely above a whisper.

  Dad raised his arm and pointed. “Your plane sheered off those trees just before impact. Apparently, that’s what turned your plane into the monument.” He pointed to the crater in the concrete dome, just five feet from the top. “The damage to the air memorial is minor compared to your aircraft. They haven’t even finished cleaning up everything yet,” he said, indicating the debris on the ground.

  What was left of the plane had been removed. I could see gouges in the ground where the plane had dug in. Then I noticed the gilded letters on the side of the memorial:

  PORTAL OF THE FOLDED WINGS

  The scene spun in my head, and turbulent emotions surged within me, followed by a series of questions: What is wrong with my memory? Why can’t I remember this? How does someone forget something so huge? What really happened barely a week ago? Then the big question, the one that loomed over me like some haunting apparition: Why was I the only survivor?

  I couldn’t sort it all out. My mind hurt. It felt as if it were going to explode. I started to panic, and so I took slow, deep breaths to stave off the attack. I hung my head, noticing the grass for the first time. It was dingy and ugly, browned by the scorch of the mid-summer sun. I looked up again. The monument looked old and a little dingy itself, having weathered decades of summer suns.

  I couldn’t stop looking at the structure, marveling at it, wondering about it. I was drawn to it in ways I couldn’t understand, like a curious insect drawn to a glowing bulb.

  The irony was impossible not to notice—this memorial to deceased aviators had taken the lives of two more. Inside the structure were plaques to their memory. Outside, where Chuck and Gene had died, there were no plaques.

  I had flown over it scores of times. Even that seemed mysterious to me. A sense of destiny came over me as I sat there in the car staring. It was intriguing. At the same time it was indicting. I felt as if it were taunting me somehow. As we sat at the end of Valhalla Drive, everyone had something to say. I was quiet, my mind busy with its own questions, all of which eventually came around to one: Could it be true that I had caused the crash?

  7

  DESTINED FOR THE SKY

  It was good to be home. Good to be pampered by my mom instead of the nurses. Not to mention the food. There’s nothing like your mother’s cooking, especially when you’re sick. I ate it up. The food. The pampering. The familiar surroundings. It was wonderful.

  I was in a hospital bed, which they had placed in the den. I had lots of time to think, pray, dream. Invariably all my dreams led to one: flying.

  I mentioned my dream of becoming an airline pilot began when I was fourteen.

  Since the age of twelve, I had been working at my grandfather’s business, “the plant,” as we called it, and at my father’s Long Beach Redwood Corporation, the landscaping products and trucking company next door. I loved working in the family business. I felt like royalty, part of a rich bloodline with the secure destiny of being one of the heirs to the throne, possibly running it all someday along with my brothers.

  I had started with the most menial tasks, working my way up through the ranks. There were no special privileges, no fast track to success, despite my pedigree as one of the boss’s sons. I swept, I cleaned, I sacked sawdust, I baled shavings. Then I began doing truck maintenance on my dad’s 18-wheelers. Small repairs at first and routine maintenance, but gradually I took on more and more responsibility. Later, I logged a million miles driving the big rigs throughout the state delivering the products the business produced.

  I also worked hard in order to learn Spanish and could talk with some of the workers, which they appreciated. It bonded us in a special way. It felt like one big hardworking family. And I was a part of it.

  There was no job too small for me to do and no job too big that I couldn’t someday do it. I felt confident working there. There was a lot of hope in the business. My dad had a can-do attitude. “If you can dream it, you can achieve it,” he was fond of saying. Earl Nightingale, the motivational speaker, had been a big influence in his life. Dad had listened to all his tapes. His if-you-think-you-can-you-can philosophy permeated the company. Dad wouldn’t allow the word can’t in our vocabulary. He had always encouraged his workers to bring him their problems, but they had to first write out the problem and have two possible solutions written out with it. “Think it out, then write it out” was another thing you would hear him say. Dad was an outstanding businessman with impeccable integrity.

  It’s hard to think of a fourteen-year-old as having a philosophy of life, but all those things worked themselves into my thinking and set my course from that time forward.

  That same year, something happened that changed who I was and what I wanted to do with my life. My grandfather received an unexpected financial bonus and decided to take the family on a trip around the world. We were in no way a wealthy family, but that summer it felt like we were. We traveled to Berlin and saw the Berlin Wall. We toured the Middle East. We went to Paris. France was so old and so beautiful in contrast to the United States. Paris at night was magical, quite possibly the most beautiful city in the world. And the girls. You can’t imagine the effect the French girls had on the pubescent boy I was then. I felt I was becoming a man. And that felt really good. Because of the magnificent lights, the lure of Paris at night was almost addictive. Being there planted seeds within me to want to travel and see the world.

  We flew everywhere and saw as much of that world as we could see in a three-week period. Switzerland was my favorite. But there was Austria. Italy. Lebanon. Syria. Egypt. We traipsed through the ruins of an empire in Rome and traveled through the pages of the Bible in Jerusalem. We saw the Mona Lisa in the Louvre and the most beautiful women in the world in Italy and Scandinavia.

  Everywhere we went, we were treated royally. We were looked up to because we were Americans, and the rest of the world still treasured the memories of our involvement in World War II. England, France, Denmark, Italy, they were all so appreciative, mainly because there were so many people still alive who had fought in that war, who had lost fathers and sons in that war, who had cheered American soldiers as they liberated Europe, city by war-torn city.

  Pretty amazing experiences for a kid on the cusp of growing up. The most amazing experience, though, was not any one place we traveled to or any particular sight we saw when we got there. The most amazing things to me were the TWA Boeing 707s we traveled on and the pilots that flew them.

  The size of the jet, the sheer power of its engines, the thrill of liftoff, the sound of the landing gear being retracted, the ease at which the massive machine cut through the air, these were all mesmerizing. And then, before you knew it, you were at thirty thousand feet, looking down on fleecy expanses of clouds, and through breaks in the clouds to cities, farmlands, oceans that spread as far as the eye could see, sunlight glinting off their scalloped surfaces.

  The pilot behind all this power stood so tall and nonchalant in his crisply pressed uniform as you boarded his plane, smiling, greeting us as if we were someone special. His demeanor was a picture of confidence and control, someone who was trained and could be trusted. Then there was the thrill of hearing his voice over the loudspeaker telling us what we could see out the left window. Or letting us know when we were about to encounter turbulence and not feeling the least bit worried because his vo
ice was so calm and reassuring.

  When our travels were over, I was a different person, with new dreams that captivated me, new sights on my horizon, new adventures that stretched ahead of me.

  I wanted to be one of those pilots, flying one of those jets to exotic parts of the world. But it seemed out of reach for a teenager who sacked his granddad’s wood sawdust and repaired his father’s trucks in what now seemed a small and shop-worn part of the world.

  Then at that pivotal age of fourteen, something else happened. Someone I had always known, who was an engineer and vice-president of our company, helped me look at my life differently. His name was Ron Davis, one of my dad’s best friends, who that year became my best friend. My dad was a responsible, hardworking man, intent on building a business to provide for his family and to pass it on to his sons. He was not a pal-around kind of guy, not one who would play catch with you in the backyard. Usually at the end of the day he was spent, with the best of himself left behind at the office. And even at his best at the office, he was fairly aloof to me anyway.

  Ron was just the opposite. He may have sensed in me a need to connect with an older man. That year Ron took me backpacking up to the top of Mt. Whitney. On that trip we saw a lot of amazing sights on our way to what seemed to be the top of the world. We talked a lot about science, laughed a lot, and in the process he became a little like a father to me, filling a void that my father was either unable or unwilling—or simply too busy—to fill.

  And then the question: “Have you ever thought about flying?”