1974 DC 10 - Paris

When I was listening about the Brazilian Crash it made me think of what happened in 1974 in
Paris...

When I was 9 an airplane crash happened outside of Paris that took 375 people. 10 entire families from my school. 8 of those families were close friends of my family.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,908559,00.html


To me it was the 8 families where I knew all the kids and did sleep overs and cared about them that seemed to be the worst. Selfish as 9 years old is, I still felt the grief of London for the other 275 people that were in mourning. However, it was very difficult at 9 to realize that everyone was dead. Moms and Dads are supposed to have kept them safe. This is a combination of 100 family members just gone to dust - a wide awakening for a child with a vivid imagination.

From my high school should you think I am making it all up

" 1974 -first Music Tour – Stage Band goes to The Hague The American Memorial Collection is established in the Mellon Library to commemorate ASL families killed in a Paris plane crash The International Schools Sports Tournament (ISST) is started " http://www.asl.org/


I think a lot about the families that were lost in the crash as my family had returned to London only hours before. As old as I get, the unreality of the reality of death never ceases to amaze me.

As The BBC is much more graphic than any American TV station , especially in the 70's we were treated to pictures of bodies and body parts all caught in the forest where the plane went down. Judy Norman and I morbidly wondered which belonged to our friends.

I have tried to find pictures - but to my great relief I can not find any that are on the net now. I guess what I saw has made such an impression that if I could paint or stage an enactment in order to memorialize I would. Staying in my mind, makes the reality live regardless


The following is a song by 10 cc that came out right after the DC 10 crash and was one of their first hits in London : wonder if 10 cc and DC 10 had anything to do with it?

Probably not, but I have always associated the song with the crash. We used to have the TV Commercials over there that were " Hullo I'm Susan" as a flight attendant " Fly Me" = Braniff airlines if I remember correctly , but the most popular was a very good looking blond in front of a DC-10 saying " I'm Mandy: Fly Me"





I remember reading through the endless death lists with my friend Judy Norman - just hoping that Karla Wilcox, Terry Hart and many more of our friends were not on that skiing trip in Switzerland that went through Paris to London. If BA had not been on strike they might not have been on the flight. Just one of the coincidences of life and death that make you wonder.

Sadly so more than 100 people on the flight were parents or children of The American School in London.

It was a great loss to lose that many people; and I still am holding on to them in my mind.