By: Marcia King-Gamble
www.lovemarcia.com
Change can be good or at the very least enlightening. While
challenging, and often daunting, it can make you realize what you’re made of,
and it certainly gives you an opportunity to reflect and grow.
Like so many others, these last ten to fifteen years have
not been easy for me. I left a long marriage,
downsized an executive career, lost parents and animals I adored, and overall was
forced to make some tough decision on my own. There were times I barely made it, but I held
on by my fingertips and persevered.
While these past fifteen years haven’t always been
laughter filled, I still remember that life changing day in 1988, four days
before Christmas when the world got a huge wake up call. On December 21st,
a plane literally fell from the sky, starting a chain of events that would later be labeled terrorism.
Pan Am’s flight 103 was on its way back from London to New
York when it went down in Lockerbie, Scotland, taking with it many lives. While I was
no longer a flight attendant, I worked in a managerial capacity for the airline.
That tragedy took with it 243 passengers, 16 crew members, and 11 innocent bystanders on the ground.
The day when it happened, I was at the Pan Am Building in New York City,
interviewing for a marketing position. My interview was cut short and we were
all summoned back to our respective departments. My department happened to be crew
scheduling, and one of my duties was to accurately
staff the planes. So for all intents and purpose, I knew the names
of every flight attendant on board that plane. I had actually flown
with some. These were real people to me;
men and women who were family. I knew their circumstances intimately.
My office was in Hangar 14. There, phones rang all day. Distraught
families began showing up at JFK airport, needing to get updates or at least be offered
words of comfort. We had nothing for them. News dribbled in sporadically. Groups of employees began banding together. After our regular duties we would go to the terminal to talk with the families
who’d lost loved ones. We had no grief training, we were just there to hug and try to reassure these grief stricken people that the airline would get them to Lockerbie somehow. We did the best we could.
During the day I was assigned the Command Center and I had
the distasteful job of making sure that if a flight attendant’s body part was
identified, it was listed next to their name as ‘found.’ Gruesome and upsetting
as this experience was, it drove home for me the fragility of life and the need
for compassion.
Years later, I was to write a book, (yes a romance) about an
airplane that fell out of the sky and how two people who lost friends aboard, were able to work through it and find love.
That book is titled Eden’s Dream
and I released it again with a new cover.
But tragic as this event was, some good did come out of it. The world is now better
prepared to deal with the aftermath of terrorism.
Transportation companies now have trained Go teams that are dispatched to work with the bereaved and offer what comfort they can. These
are usually volunteers who pack up on a dime and head off to the disaster site. Terminal security has improved greatly. No
longer (with few exceptions,) can anyone on a whim, accompany a passenger to the
departure gate. Today, Federal Air Marshals blend
in with regular passengers and are on designated flights.
But this blog isn’t about improved security in the travel
industry, or about Go Teams, it’s about how tragedy can be life changing. As a result, I am a trained crisis manager today. I have learned to be
more compassionate while remaining unflappable. I have learned not to take one day for
granted, and I have gained an even deeper respect for my former colleagues,
crew members who go to work day after day, never knowing who might be on board and if they’ll actually come home.
I have learned that a smile and genuine kindness can go a long way.
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