Monsters in the Sky
The airplane that crashed into the house behind mine yesterday. . . . the pilot did it deliberately. The police are calling it a homocide/suicide.
Apparently, the pilot and his wife were divorced and the wife had custody of their 8-year-old daughter. The child had spent the weekend with her father, but yesterday morning, the school called the mother to report that the child had not come in that day.
The father called his ex-wife on his cell a few minutes before the crash and told her that “I’ve got her and you’re not going to get her.”
The mother was at the police station filing a missing person’s report almost exactly as the plane was crashing into her parents’ house.
The little girl’s principal (a friend of mine) described the child as “. . . a dear little girl” who “got a kick out of things and enjoyed life. She just was one of those really friendly, really open little kids.”
Little children trust their parents, even parents who aren’t always nice to them. Little kids trust most adults. I will never be able to comprehend how a parent, or any adult, could do something like this to a child. People get angry, sure. People feel mistreated, sure. People win, and people lose, sure. People are frustrated and driven and upset and desperate, sure.
None of these things is any kind of excuse for laying a violent hand on a child, or including a little child in a cowardly act of ‘revenge,’ no matter what the circumstances. What this man did is unforgiveable. I wish I could erase the mental images of this little girl’s last moments, the worst of which would be the knowledge that her father was perfectly willing to murder her because he was mad at Mommy.
Obviously, he was mentally unstable. I believe all people who do horrible or criminal acts are mentally unstable. I do not believe that is a viable excuse or defense. He was scum.
And oh, that precious, beautiful, innocent, betrayed little child. . . . .
Golden Crocuses and Luck
Spring is here. The crocuses always know.
Not much happening here, unless you’re my neighbors down the road and behind. A small airplane crashed into their house today.
The radio and tv stations, and the police band, were saying only that the plane crashed into a house near the airport, and since that fits my house’s description, my phone started ringing off the hook with concerned friends. To those concerned friends: I thank you all for caring. That means a lot.
The small airport just a little ways down the road gets a lot of traffic. Besides the many local people with small planes, the airport is used a lot by General Motors and Ford, and various other businesses in this area. The Navy uses it a lot, too; there’s a huge naval base near here. That’s right, a naval base right in southern Indiana. A really, really big one, too. We’ve lived here for thirty years, and I know of only three serious mishaps concerning the airport, counting the guy on the motorcycle who was killed by a deer. We’re not allowed to skate on the runways any more because of the deer.
But then, I’m from a generation that played close to incredible danger and didn’t even know it. We used to lie on the banks beside the railroad tracks, our toes almost touching the rails, so we could feel the breeze as the train sped past. We used to walk through those huge sewer pipes, during the dry season, and pretend they were caves. There were a lot of them right in the middle of town, and we called them all “Dead Man’s Cave.” And since this is southern Indiana, there were, of course, real caves everywhere. And quarries! But I digress.
It’s spring, even though the calendar doesn’t know it yet. And I am feeling very fortunate today; my house is intact and so am I.
God bless the family of the pilot.
I'm Cool With That
