Reflections On The Passing Of A Genuine Hero

During my stint at The Milwaukee Journal and Journal Sentinel I developed something of a niche specialty: airline safety. Which meant traveling to airline crash sites, and usually reporting from a scene at which there had been indescribable destruction and suffering, but few if any survivors.

Sioux City, Iowa, was one of my assignments, and it was unforgettable for many reasons - - first and foremost because against all odds, many people lived.

On a sweltering June day in 1989, the flight crew of a crippled United Airlines DC-10 jumbo jet had managed a miraculous crash-landing after the huge plane's steering and other controls had been virtually wiped out following an in-flight engine explosion.

A key player in that drama was a chance passenger and pilot, Denny Fitch, who has died at age 69.

Fitch was not a working United pilot that day, but offered his help on the flight deck as the crew battled to keep the plane aloft, steer it in one direction only with engine thrust, and carefully ease back on power to limp in circles and descend towards Sioux City where they hit the runway fast and hard.

When the plane crash-landed and cart-wheeled in a fireball, Fitch had jammed himself at the pilots' feet on the floor of the cockpit, without a seat or harness, adding the force of his legs to the brakes.

Safety officials gave reporters a slow bus tour through the site which still reeked of jet fuel and charred debris. The wreckage field was huge - - its layout recreated in the moving 1993 film, "Fearless," starring Jeff Bridges - -  yet 184 of the 295 people on board survived because the pilots, and Fitch, had used every molecule of their minds, every second of their training and every muscle fiber in their bodies for one desperate shot at a landing.

Fitch was seriously injured, but lived - - until Monday.

At 69, he died far too early, but if anyone ever deserved to be called "Hero" it was Denny Fitch.

R.I.P.