Jerry Schemmel’s Life Changing Experience

January 25, 2009
by Jeremy

By Jeremy

I had the pleasure of meeting Denver Nuggets radio play by play announcer (he has cut back to doing only home games this season) Jerry Schemmel a couple of years ago.  He was involved in a tragic plan crash in 1989 and he now shares his experience and how it has changed his life whenever the opportunity arises.

He has written a book about the experience called “Chosen to Live” about the crash, the difficult aftermath and how it changed him.  Jerry has contributed a summary of his story to a book called “Chicken Soup for the Soul Inside Basketball” and Chris Tomasson was given permission to print the entry in it’s entirity.  I was not give permission to print it, but hopefully by quoting it from Tomasson’s blog post I will avoid prosecution.

The Crash that Changed My Life

Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.
“Times New Roman” ~2 Corinthians 5:17

In 1989, I was the Deputy Commissioner of the Continental Basketball Association, which at the time was the minor league system for the NBA. I had worked for one of the league’s teams in various capacities, including marketing director and radio play-by-play announcer. Just three months earlier, my wife Diane and I had moved to Denver, where the CBA office was located.

On the morning of July 19th, I got up early to catch a seven A.M. flight from Denver to Chicago. I was traveling with my boss and great friend, Jay Ramsdell, who was the commissioner of the league. Jay and I were set to fly to Chicago, then make a connection in Chicago and go on to Columbus, Ohio, to attend th e CBA’s college draft. We never got there.

Jay and I got the last two seats aboard United Airlines Flight 232. It was a jumbo jet with 296 people on board. Completely full. I end up in row 23, Jay in 30. There are thirty-seven rows in a DC-10. We took off for Chicago under perfect weather conditions — sunshine, no wind, eighty-three degrees.

About halfway to Chicago — exactly an hour into the flight — at 37,000 feet and over northwest Iowa, a catastrophic event took place within the aircraft that eventually led to the death of 112 people. The number two engine, which sits in back and on top of the plane, exploded. The sound and the feel ripped through the cabin and the plane immediately began to lose altitude.

My first thought was that a bomb had gone off. Panic seemed to consume the cabin. Dishes flew from tray tables while the sounds of screams followed the sound of the explosion. I figured we were going down, that this was it for everyone on board. I reasoned we would eventually hit the ground and all of us would be dead very20soon. I held onto my armrests as tight as I could, fighting both the drop and the oncoming nausea that follows heavy turbulence.

After about thirty seconds, I could feel the plane start to come out of its drop. We were starting to ease back up. And level off.

The panic slowly began to subside and we waited very anxiously for someone to inform us as to what had happened and what sort of predicament we were now in. That came about ten minutes later when our cockpit captain came on the public address system. He informed us that the number two engine had exploded, causing “a lot of damage to the aircraft.” He later told us that we had been given a directive to make an emergency landing in Sioux City, Iowa, and that we were to listen to the flight attendants as they would take us through the emergency landing procedures.

The captain made sure we understood very, very clearly, that we were in trouble. Because there was so much collateral damage to the plane as a result of the engine explosion, the cockpit crew had very little control of the plane and knew there was simply no way to land the huge aircraft safely. “I’m not going to kid anybody,” said our captain. “This is going to be rough.” We knew it would not be an emergency landing. It would be a crash landing.

At 3:59 P.M., Flight 232 made contact with the edge of a runway at the Sioux Gateway Airport at 255 miles per hour. A normal DC-10 landing is about 125 mph at touchdown. We also hit at a nineteen degree angle, which meant the right wing hit first.

The initial impact was nearly indescribable. Bodies were thrown about the cabin in the first couple of seconds. Some were still strapped to their chairs. Others were thrown from their seats. Smoke and fire started to fill the cabin. I remained in the brace position the flight attendants had shown us. I held the seatback in front of me with all the strength I could muster.

The plane then began a long, fast slide. About the time I thought we might actually coast to a stop, the plane began to flip forward into an almost cartwheel type motion.

After we flipped over, the plane, unknown to me, began to break apart. I ended up in a piece that was rows 19 through 28, a fairly small section compared to some of the others. The piece I ended up in flipped over once, then slid upside-down and backwards for another 4,000 feet. We finally came to an abrupt halt in a cornfield next to the airport. We had traveled more than a mile after hitting the ground.

When we stopped, I was hanging upside-down in my chair, my seat and seatbelt still completely intact. Unlike many of the people around me, I never lost consciousness. I felt no pain and saw no blood on my clothes. So, I unbuckled and slipped onto the ceiling.

Eventually, I made my way to the back of plane, away from the heaviest smoke. I passed several passengers who I knew had not survived, who had died on impact. There was no choice but to move on, away from the smoke. I found myself moving toward those who were moving themselves, doing my best to get them away from the smoke and fire.

After a few minutes, I saw an opening, and people moving through it, to the outside. It was20where the tail section had broken off and was easy to get through once I got back there and could see it. After assisting several survivors through the opening and into the cornfield, I ducked out myself, only to find myself back in a moment later.

I heard a baby’s cry. The next thing I knew I was back inside the wreckage. I didn’t weigh any risks. I didn’t think it through. In fact, I didn’t think about anything. I just reacted. It just happened. I heard a baby crying and before I could figure out exactly what was going on, I was outside the wreckage with a baby in my arms.

Eleven-month-old Sabrina Michaelson survived the crash along with her parents and two older brothers. They were reunited some forty-five minutes later when her parents found her in the arms of a woman I handed her to.

But 112 other people were not as fortunate. One of those fatalities was my boss and great friend, Jay Ramsdell.

Besides the questions, “How did you ever get back on a plan e again?” or “How do you still fly after surviving a plane crash?” I think the most often asked question of me is: “How has the event changed you?” I can easily give a one word reply: “Completely!”

I am simply not the same man I was before the plane crash. I never, ever thought I would say this but I am, in many ways, a better person because of Flight 232. I battled survivor’s guilt, tried to fight off anger and went to war with depression. Then, about a year after the crash and because of the crash, I became a Christian, which is the greatest thing that has ever happened to me, the greatest decision I have ever made.

Jesus Christ has completely changed me and the priorities in my life. And all for the better.

With the inner strength that can only be gained through a relationship with Christ, I got back into broadcasting, which I had dabbled in for years before the crash, and eventually was fortunate enough to make it to the NBA. I believe He has allowed me to move from tragedy to triumph.

Jesus means it when he says in the Bible — “Behold, I make all things new.”

~Jerry Schemmel, Broadcaster, Denver Nuggets

 

Posted on January 25, 2009 at 3:49 pm | filed in | No Comments

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