CHOSEN TO LIVEA unique perspective to apply to our own lives.by JERRY SCHEMMEL

ILLUSTRATIONS BY ROBERf GOETZL

EVEN THOUGH I work for theDenver Nuggets, I'm not going tosay much about basketball. I

want to talk about something that's alittle more important, at least in myopinion. I want to talk about a planecrash and how it's affected me. Myintention is to leave you with a littleseed planted.

On July 19th, 1989, I was the deputycommissioner of the ContinentalBasketball Association (CBA),which isthe NBA's minor league system. Backthen, our offices were based in Denver.I was traveling that day from Denver,making a connection in Chicago, andgoing on to Columbus, Ohio. At leastthat was the plan.

The CBA's college draft was sched-uled forI the next day. I was travelingwith Jay'Ramsdale, who was commis-sioner of the CBA league. Jay had be-come commissioner at the age of 23 -the youngest commissioner in the his-tory of professional sports and abrilliant young administrator, obvi-Ously. Jay and I were also very goodfriends. We had known each other fora couple of years, working for differentteams in the league before he came tothe CBA office. I was hired to be hisright-hand man just three monthsbefore we got on this plane.

We had arrived at Denver-StapletonAirport at about 6:30 a.m. for a 7:00flight. When we got there, we foundout the flight had been cancelled for

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mechanical problems with the airplane.So United Airlines put us on ~tandbyfor the next four flights to Chicago. Theoriginal flight we were booked on hadmost of the people re-booked ahead ofus because we had showed up fairlylate. All of the flights that morningfrom Denver to Chicago were booked.Finally, at 12:45 in the afternoon, Jayand I had our names called. We got thevery last two seats aboard that aircraft.We had waited almost seven hours toboard the plane. I got handed a ticketin row 23, and Jay got handed a ticketin row 30.

In the eight-and-a-half years sincethis plane crash, there have been anamazing number of people who'vesaid, "You know, I was supposed to beon your flight, but for some reason Ididn't get on. I changed plans and didsomething else." Now, I've got to tellyou - if everybody was telling thetruth, about 8,215 people were to be onthis plane!

We took off for Chicago under whatI would call perfect conditions. It was83 degrees when we left Denver, withalmost no wind. About halfway intothe two-hour flight to Chicago, abovenorth-central Iowa, something hap-pened that started a series of events thatled us to crash land in Sioux City, Iowa.

We were about 150 miles away fromSioux City, cruising along on as smootha ride as you can get, when an explo-sion occurred. When I sayan explo-

sion, I mean it was just that. Not somelittle pop or bang, it was an explosion.There was a tremendous sound to it, aswell as the force and feel. To give youan idea of what it felt like, the first thingthat went into my mind was that abomb had been planted on the planeand it has been detonated. In fact, thetiming was only about five or sixmonths after Pan Am flight 103 wasdowned by a terrorist bomb overScotland. I thought, someone hasplanted a bomb, it's been detonated,and this is it for everybody becausepeople don't survive planes that havebombs go off in them.

The plane went into a dip. We didn'tdrop suddenly or start a turbulent free-fall by any stretch. We kind of began toease down in the airplane. After about30 seconds, which seemed muchlonger at the time, we came out of thatdrop and leveled off again.

There was a tremendous amount ofpanic inside the cabin right after theexplosion, as you might guess. Onething that didn't happen, though,which helped to mitigate things, wasthat we never lost cabin pressure andthe oxygen masks didn't drop down.Among the 296 passengers there were18 kids on board who were five yearsof age and younger. It was in themiddle of summer and many familieswere traveling on vacation.

After we came out of the drop andwe leveled off again, I tried to assess

what was happening. By this time,realizing the plane was moving forwardand not dropping anymore, the chaosinside the cabin subsided very quickly.But I had a real strong hunch thatsomething was still very wrong.

As it turned out, an engine hadblown up, and the explosion was soviolent that it took out the hydraulicsystem in the aircraft. Ifyou don't havethe hydraulics, you don't have a lot ofthings. It's much like having powersteering and power brakes in yourcar - when they go out, the steeringwheel locks up and the brakes don'twork. It's the same thing in a planethat uses hydraulics; when they go out,you're not supposed to be able to flythe plane. But somehow, and I can'tstress how miraculous it was, somehowthe cockpit crew was able to keep thatplane going. They didn't have anyinstrumentation; they didn't have anyrudder, they didn't have any elevators,no ailerons, and no steering. The onlything they had to work with on thisthree-engine DC-10 was the remain-ing two engines.

The tail engine, the number twoengine, was the one that had exploded.

It actually ripped out the back of theplane and fell 37,000 feet to the earthafter it blew up. The remaining twoengines, the wing engines, number oneand number three, were still running.To this day the cockpit captain, CaptainAlan Haynes, doesn't know why orhow he thought of a solution to guidethe plane. He grabbed the remainingtwo engine throttles and manipulatedthem to fly the plane. This was acompletely unprecedented maneuverhe had never been trained to do, butfor the next 45 minutes that's how hegot us to Sioux City.

The crew figured out right away, evenwith the little bit of control from thethrottles, that they couldn't fly straightand they couldn't turn left. The onlyway to maneuver the plane was to takeright turns. Each time we got a headingfor the Sioux City Airport, where wewere directed to make an emergencylanding, the plane would veer off to theright. Each time we had to circlearound and line up again. We did that11different times en route to Sioux City.There have been a lot of times in the lasteight-and-a-half years since this crashwhen there's been a lot of stress and

pressure in my life, but when I putmyself in that captain's chair, thosetimes didn't seem so bad.

We were coming in on our finalapproach to Sioux City with an airspeed of 255 miles an hour. A normalDC-10 landing is about 120 miles anhour. The runway we were trying toland on was 6,600 feet long; a DC-10,under normal air speed and normal rateof descent, takes a minimum of 8,000feet to land. Our rate of descent was tentimes the normal rate.

Perhaps the biggest factor and con-cern, at least in the mind of the captain,was coming in on that final approach,looking out the windshield, and seeingthe left side of the runway lined upwith fire trucks, helicopters, and ambu-lances. In amongst that group were 310people. The emergency team had beenalerted to the potential disaster andthey were on the scene waiting for usto come in. They lined up on the run-way we were trying to land on. Thesteering wheel inside the plane wascompletely locked up and the crewcouldn't control the plane from veer-ing from one side to the other oncethey got down. Captain Haynes has

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said, "When I saw that group of peopleand those vehicles, I said a simpleprayer. I said, 'God, if we have to veerin any direction, let us veer off to theright.'"

Another one of the many miraclesthat day was when we hit the groundand the plane broke into literallymillions of pieces, not one of themever went to the left. Everything veeredoff to the right side of the runway,stayed on the runway, and landed in acornfield next to the airport.

Because of our rate of descent, airspeed, and so little control of the plane,we came in at a 19-degree angle.

Whenever the flight crew pulled backon the throttles trying to slow downfor a regular air speed landing, theywould lose control. The plane wouldstart to rock to the right and, I'm told,almost went into a spin three times.We came in so fast, so hard, and withso little control, we hit with the rightwing of the plane first. That initialimpact was pretty incredible. It wasalmost like we dropped out of the skyand just hit the ground, which I guessunder the circumstances is about whathappened.

Immediately after impact inside theplane there was a tremendous amountof chaos. Bodies were being thrownabout, there was smoke and fire, andthere were people being thrown out oftheir seats. Some were still strapped intheir chairs going the other direction.I remember the plane hitting with theinitial impact, and then I could feel itbounce a couple of times, which isactually what happened - the nose

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bounced a few times and then westarted sliding. About the time Ithought we were going to coast to astop, our momentum cartwheeled theplane forward and it flipped over front-wards. We started sliding upside down,and, from my vantage point, upsidedown and backwards as well.

Once we turned over, the piece thatI was in (I did not know at the timethat the plane had broken into pieces)continued to slide another 5,100 feet.We slid almost a mile after cartwheelingupside down. We veered off the rightside of the runway, crossed a soybeanfield, crossed another runway, and then

went into the cornfield next to theairport.

When we came to a halt, we werestill upside down, and I was stillstrapped in my seat. I was one of thevery few people in my area who wasstill in that position. I unbuckled myseatbelt and got onto the floor, whichwas now the ceiling because we wereoverturned. I had to ask myself at thatpoint: "Am I alive or am I not?" I wasconvinced for a long time before we hitthat I wasn't going to make it. I reallybelieved that my number was goingto be called that day. And so, in thatmoment, I wasn't sure if I had sur-vived the crash or not. I looked downat my clothes and I saw no blood, andI didn't feel any pain. When we flippedover, I had this excruciating pain shootup my legs and my back, and into myneck. I remember thinking I had beeneither electrocuted or broken my back.That pain was completely gone. Here Iwas standing and looking around the

plane without any pain or blood. I gotmy answer pretty quickly when I feltpain on the back of my right hand. Ilooked down and fire was comingfrom the floor. Itburned the back of myhand and my knuckle.

I looked around the inside of theplane and I didn't see any way to getout. I remember thinking, "All right,I've survived this impact and now I'mgoing to suffocate or bum up in thispiece of plane because it's filling upwith smoke and fire very rapidly." Theemergency exit in front of me wasgone; now it was a wall ofbuming steel.I looked around the inside of the planeand saw two other guys standing. As Istepped over to them, one of themsaid, "Let's just start helping somepeople and maybe we can find a wayout in the process." That's what westarted to do. We realized right awaythat there were a lot of people in thearea who were not survivors, but a lotof them were. It turned out to be abouthalf and half. In the process of trying tohelp people, we saw an opening in tpefuselage. It was actually where oursection had broken off from the rest ofthe plane. We stayed as long as wecould to help, which was about threeminutes at the most, and then thesmoke chased us back to the exit hole.

The two guys who were helping mestepped out in the cornfield. I watchedthe second guy look around a little bitand then take a right turn. I figuredthat's what I had to do as well. I gotoutside the plane, took a couple ofsteps into the cornfield, and then heardthe cries of a baby. I'll tell you what Ididn't do. I didn't stand there and weighthe risks. I didn't think about goingback in the plane and not finding myway back out. I didn't think, "If I goback into this thing it might explode."I certainly didn't stand there and think,"If I go back in and rescue this 11-month-old girl, I'll come out a nationalhero and the USGA will invite me tospeak at their convention in eight yearsor Oprah will have me on her show. Ihonestly didn't think about it at all,and it's important for you to under-stand that as well. I believe thateverybody would have done the samething under those circumstances.

I heard the baby crying and thenext thing I know, I was back inside theplane. She wasn't very far back insidethe wreckage. I was on all foursbecause it was completely filled withblack smoke. I got on top of the cryingsound, and it turned out this little girlwas actually trapped inside one of the

overhead compartments of the plane,which was now the floor of the plane.

When I got outside the plane withthe baby in my arms, I do have to admitthat all those years of watching toomuch television just kicked in. Whathappens on TV when the hero getsout of something that's burning? Itexplodes every time! On McGyver ithappened once every episode. Everytime McGyver got out of somethingburning, when he was a safe distanceaway it exploded, throwing him 20 feetin the air. He lands, rolls arounda little bit, and then gets up with thatblack dirt on his face and his hair nevermoves. For the first time since theplane hit the ground I thought aboutthe plane exploding. I ran away fromthe plane with the baby in my arms, butit never exploded. It burned up into ablack shell.

I got into a little clearing in thecornfield where most of the peoplewere assembled. Many were hurt veryseriously. I don't know how some ofthem made it from the wreckage towhere they were. I recognized a womanwho had come out in front of me and Ihanded the baby off to her. The babyhad stopped crying, and she lookedlike she was fine. I told the woman, "Idon't know who the baby is, but pleasetake her. I'm going to start helpingthese other people."

The woman I handed the baby tomade her way out of the cornfield tothe runway area. They were bothchecked out 'by paramedics and werewithout any serious injury. They satdown on a blanket on the runwaywaiting ,for the ambulances to takethem to the hospital. The baby'sparents, who were on board with twoother boys aged five and seven, recog-nized their little girl being held by thiswoman and were reunited with heragain.

For 45 minutes they thought theyhad lost their little girl and the restof the family had survived. Bothparents thought the other had the childas they exited out in separate directionsfrom the plane. They were sitting infront of me in row 11. The baby wason the floor between her mother's feetwith pillows around her, which wasthe policy back then for infants inemergency landings. As a result of ourcrash, that's changed now. When Ipicked her up, I'm guessing she was inrow 26 or 27. She was thrown about 15rows and the extent of her injuries wasa little scrape on her face below her lefteye.

The result of Flight 232 wasthat 112 of the 296 on boarddied that day, including mytravel companion and greatfriend, Jay Ramsdale. Jay wassitting in row 30, about wherethe plane broke off from therest of us. He got trapped inthe tail section, which burnedvery badly. In fact, they didn'tidentify Jay's body until fourdays following the crash, afterhis parents brought dentalrecords to Sioux City.

Besides the question ofhow would you ever get backon a plane again, I think themost often asked questionsof me after this tragedy are,"How has this thing changedyou, your life, and what has itdone to you?" In generalterms, it has changed me in avery drastic way. My priori-ties are completely differentfrom what they were beforethe crash. Today, spiritualconvictions are my top pri-ority: I try to live my life as aChristian man the best that Ican. My family comes afterthat. Whether the Nuggetswin or lose a particular gameis way down on my list,which when you're 4 and 42 is a veryhealthy perspective, let me assure you!

More specifically, what this crash hasdone is to cause me to reevaluatesomething. It's caused me to redefinea particular word in our Americanvocabulary, and that word is success.I think we talk about and listen tothe word and what's behind successall the time. It's rampant in our society.I think for the most part the Americanpublic has the same basic definitionof the word success - it is settingthe goal and striving to achieve it,including the financial rewards andmaterial things that come along withit. Americans dream success.

I have a little bit different definitionof success after becoming a survivor ofthis plane crash. To me, success is notnecessarily setting a goal and strivingto get to this level and the thingsthat go with it. To me, success is notmeasured by where we're at or by theplateau we've reached. To me, as asurvivor of this tragedy, success ismeasured by what we did along theway to get to where we are today. Ithink the questions we really have toask to decide whether we are successfulor not in our lives as we climb that

ladder are, "Did we step on some toesand/or some fingers, did we hurtpeople on the way, or did we do thingswith honesty and integrity?" Now Ithink a real question we have to askis, "Did I neglect my family along theway?"

I think many of you have heard ofthe American speed skater named EricHeiden. He won five Olympic goldmedals in speed skating back in 1980at the Lake Placid Olympic Games. Inthe 1976 Olympics, his best finish inone particular race was 19th. Fouryears later he won five gold medals. Heis probably one of the greatest speedskaters of all time. I read an articleabout Eric Heiden a couple of monthsafter the Olympics. The jist of thearticle was that for two-and-a-halfmonths after the Olympics, he didn'tknow where his five gold medals were;he didn't know if they had been stolen,if he accidentally threw them away, orif they were packed away somewhere.The article included a quote by Heiden:"I don't care one iota where those goldmedals are." I thought to myself,"Eric Heiden is crazy. If I had won onebronze medal from the Olympics, Iwould have the thing in glass, with

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security guards around it. 1would sleepwith it and never let it out of my sight."

He had five gold medals and hedidn't care where they were. 1thoughtEric Heiden had the whole thing allwrong.

The article described Eric Heiden,his exploits and the incredible successthat he had, and the work that he hadput into it. At the end of the articlethere was a quote from Eric Heiden:"I get no satisfaction out of looking atmy five gold medals. My satisfactioncomes from looking back at the hardwork 1put in and the sacrifices 1madeto get those five gold medals."

Eric Heiden had the right idea aboutsuccess. You know what he was doing?Eric Heiden focused on the journeyand the destination took care of itselfin the form of five Olympic goldmedals.

1 think the real meaning of successis a focus on the journey and not thedestination. If you start focusing onthe journey, incredible things start tohappen. You become more focused;your perspective on things becomesbetter. You gain an attitude that I'mgoing to go out, roll up my sleeves, anddo the best job 1can under the circum-stances. To me, that means with theability God has given us and notworrying about the result. 1 know if 1focus on the journey, the destinationis going to take care of itself. If youdo that, 1 promise you that it willhappen to you. I'm a small-town kidfrom South Dakota. 1didn't have muchgoing for me, not more than anybodyelse, anyway, and if 1 can do it andthese amazing things can happen tome, let me guarantee, you can do it aswell. The real meaning of success isa focus on the journey and not thedestination.

1know what some of you are think-ing right now - this is just another guytalking about business ethics, doing theright thing, honesty, integrity, and allthat kind of stuff. It's a lot more thanbusiness ethics. It's life.

1 came out of that plane crash with-out any serious injury. When the planecame to a halt, 1 was still strapped in,hanging upside down. When 1 un-buckled my seatbelt, stood on the floor,and looked up at where my seat was,mine was the only one hanging there.Everybody around me in that crashdied: the guy to my left, the womanacross the aisle from me, her eight-year-old son, the guy behind me, and theone-year-old boy sitting on the floorbetween his mother's feet in front of

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me. Everyone around me in that crashdied, and 1 came out of it without anyserious injury. 1 feel like my life hasbeen given back to me. I've got asecond chance that most people ex-periencing a plane crash don't get, andfor that reason 1feel like I've found thereal meaning of success.

I'd like to close with a question thatI'd like you to think about. What doyou think we thought about in thatplane before we hit the ground? Therewere 45 minutes between the engineexplosion and us hitting down in SiouxCity. We were going to crash; we weretold in so many words by the captainthat we were not going to land safelyand walk off that plane. In fact, the lastthing he said to us was, "Folks, I'm notgoing to kid anybody. This is going tobe rough. This will be rougher thananything you've ever been through."We knew from the start to the endthat we were going to crash.

1 can tell you first of all what wedidn't think about. We didn't thinkabout what kind of car we had parkedback at the Stapleton Airport garage;we didn't think about whether it was aBMW or a vw. We didn't think aboutour house and how big it was or howmany square feet we had. We didn't pullout our business card and say, "Boy, I'mpresident of this company and I'mgoing to die a big shot." None of uspulled out our business cards andthought, "I'm the golf course super-intendent of So and So Country Club."We didn't think about money, cars, ormaterial possessions.

1 think you have a pretty good ideaof what we thought about - wethought about spiritual convictions,relationships, and family. Do you knowwhy we thought of these things? Be-cause we were trying to determine,thinking about the idea that we mightnot survive, if we had been successful

in our lives. You know what we didto find that out? We looked at thejourney to find out whether we hadbeen successful or not. Everything wethought about in those 45 minutes wasthe journey, not the destination. Wewere trying to figure out if we had beensuccessful because 1 can guaranteeevery one of us on board thought aboutdying.

The real meaning of success isfocusing on the journey. You say, "Whatdoes that mean?" What that meansis the task at hand - you roll yoursleeves up and do everything you canto do the best you can. At the sametime, keeping perspective, not neglect-ing your family, and doing things withhonesty and integrity.

When I say not neglecting yourfamily, that hits so hard for me; I havea five-year-old daughter. I've deter-mined how kids spell love. They don'tspell it L-O-V-E. My daughter spellslove T-I-M-E. She doesn't care if Ibuy her something, she doesn't carewhether the Nuggets win or lose aparticular game, she doesn't care aboutmoney, or about how big a house wehave. She cares about spending sometime with Dad; she cares about Dadplaying Barbies with her or just goingfor a walk with the dog. Kids spelllove T-I-M-E.

I think the real meaning of successis to focus on that perspective, thatjourney, and then things don't getfouled up along the way. I think youkeep the right perspective and thenamazing things start happening to you.

Do you want to try to protect yourinvestment and to protect yourself?Then I have a turf tip for you - focuson the journey. Because when you do,the destination takes care of itself.

JERRY SCHEMMEL has been the voiceof the Denver Nuggets since 1992. Hissportscasting career spans 16 years, in-cluding radio and television play-by-play.He is the author of the book Chosen toLive, published in 1996 by VictoryPublishing Company, Littleton, Colorado.

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