1972 -The Year of Flying Dangerously

Uncle John (left) in one of his beloved race cars, Athens

        My uncle John had been living in Athens for many years, he was retired from the Air Force, he loved race cars and he loved Greece, and sent me many post cards, letters and tchotchkes from there. In June, 1972 he fell and suffered a head injury and had to be hospitalized. He was flown to Wiesbaden Hospital on the Air Force Base in West Germany, near Frankfurt.

Uncle John 

 

        I had just graduated from high school and was quite oblivious to anything that was not happening directly to me.

 

        But I recently found a journal that my father kept about this trip. My father had suddenly to fly from Tucson to Frankfurt and then on to Athens.

  

        Tuesday, June 13, 1972

 

        Left Tucson 11:15 a.m. TWA 483 to Chicago.

        1 martini $1.50

        Lousy lunch. Beef stew (!) salad

        Thunderstorms, very rough, seatbelts.

        From 1 p.m. on flying north to go around storms

        Arrive Chicago 4:15 p.m.

 

        After this very bumpy ride, a “lousy lunch,” and the overall anxiety he must have been feeling, my father arrived at O’Hare only to find he was being paged to get a message from my mother.

.

        This is the last thing anyone wants. To be paged at an airport, the day after your brother was medevaced and hospitalized, and to receive a call from my mother. Of course he thought it was some bad news about John.

        Soon I was paged and went to the counter where the attendant told me that my wife had called to tell me not to forget to buy insurance!

Airline Trip Insurance Machine

 

        They used to sell flight insurance right out of machines at the airport. As you would now be able to buy a Diet Coke, you could then buy several thousands dollars worth of life insurance. And my father bought a bunch. It cost him $16.58

 

        My father went on: 

         She (the airline worker) also wanted to look at my baggage check again. Inquired what color and size my bag was and I said “So it’s lost,” and she replied “Everything is all right but my manager wants to see you so please wait here.”  Finally, after I spoke to the girl a few times she got another girl to take me through the hordes of people waiting to board downstairs where it seemed to be a routine inspection of luggage.

 

They took my red bag looked through it, sent me through the X ray machine. On the other side I was stopped by a man. (The previous people were not stopped.) I began to think I was getting a little extra inspection. He made me empty out my pockets completely—took me over in a corner and gave me the “frisk” treatment after politely asking me if it was O.K. I suddenly spotted my bag with an important looking official standing over it. I said “That’s it, that’s my bag.

 

The official (Mr. Becker) said “Mr. Warren do you object to having your luggage examined?” I said “Not at all, but what the hell is this all about?” He said “Maybe I can explain. Let’s take your luggage into my office—Mr. Warren you carry an awful lot of insurance.” We went into his office. Three FBI men or whatever appeared from nowhere. I opened the bag. They looked at everything at length. Finally, they okayed it.

           

Mr. Becker said he was sorry for all the inconvenience but very strange things have been happening and would I like to have a drink on Lufthansa? While I, of course, accepted with alacrity and was ushered into the VIP room and got the VIP treatment from then on.

 

“Accepted the drink with alacrity,” that’s my father in a nutshell.

 

This sort of screening might be routine today, but in 1972? With my father, the least suspicious man on earth? Why did this happen? Because my mother tipped them off that he was buying life insurance?

 

            It turns out that 1972 was the year of flying dangerously.  Not only were there 72 plane crashes, but there were 15 airline hijackings, about once a month. Two thousand three hundred seventy-three people died in 72 airliner crashes in 1972.  When my father flew in June there had been 11 fatal airline crashes and 630 people had died. While he was on his trip, there were two more crashes—Japan Airlines near New Delhi, and British European Airlines near Heathrow, another 203 dead.

 

No wonder my mother wanted him to buy insurance.

Tele Trip insurance was big business, and thanks to all the crashes, people bought a lot of it. But there were also millions of dollars paid out in claims and people found ways to defraud the insurance. “Instances arose where Americans began to purposely release dynamite on planes in order to facilitate an insurance claim. In one, a Denver businesswoman’s son hid explosives in a Christmas present, which detonated on her flight and resulted in the death of 39 passengers and five airline employees. He admitted to the FBI that he committed this crime for an insurance payout, and was thereafter executed in a gas chamber.”

  

Plus 1972 was also a huge year for hijackings. Here’s a description of one:  On January 28, 1972 TWA Flight 2 Los Angeles to New York was highjacked by a "con man and bank robber" Garrett Trapnell. He not only demanded $306,800 to cover the loss from a recent court case, but also the release of Angela Davis and another friend of his in jail. Plus clemency from Richard Nixon.  The FBI retook the aircraft, and shot and wounded Trapnell. Everyone else arrived safely.

 

Meanwhile my father finally made it to the hospital in Germany and they decided to fly my uncle to William Beaumont Hospital in Fort Bliss, Texas where he died a month later.

Athens 1972

 

It took my father two more travel days to make it to Athens, where he was faced with the sad task of packing up my uncle’s apartment. There are a few more notes about the trip,  he ate fish at Restaurant Dubrovnik, had some 80 cent martinis and a bitchy stewardess on the flight to Germany, and made a new friend from Tel Aviv named Paul Mozes. He wrote down his phone number. To my knowledge this was my father’s only trip to Europe.  

Uncle John in his Athens apartment 

 

For anyone who thinks 2020 is a bad year, it is. But 1972 wasn't that great either. Planes were falling out of the air, the cockpit was regularly filled with hijackers. The war was on in Vietnam, Angela Davis was in jail, and Nixon was president. So take hope and have heart.

My dad in Athens, 1972