On Dec. 8, 1972, a Boeing 737 commercial passenger aircraft dropped from the cold, gray, and wet sky over Chicago.
At 2.28 p.m. (CST), United Airlines Flight 553 plummeted into the working class and ethnically diverse neighborhood of West Lawn on the city’s southwest side, first clipping trees before flattening and destroying four homes and erupting into fire and smoke.
Of the 61 people on board, 43 were killed. Two others died on the ground.Flight 553 had been en route to Omaha, Nebraska, from Washington National Airport. It was during the attempted landing—a scheduled stopover at Midway International Airport two miles from where the plane crashed—that things went wrong.
What no doubt prevented a large number of fatalities among those living in West Lawn, a community uniformly set out in a grid of streets lined with well-maintained bungalows, is that disaster happened when many adults were working and their children were at school.
It was the first fatal accident involving the 737 since Boeing introduced the model in 1967.
Recalling the Fatal Day
Mike Walsh was one of those kids from West Lawn who were at school when Flight 553 crashed. He was in the 2nd Grade, his brother in the 1st Grade, at the Edward N. Hurley Elementary School, located a block from where the plane hit the 3700 block at West 70th Place.The Walsh family lived a block and a half from the crash site.
Normally, at 2.30 p.m., Walsh and his classmates would have been leaving the school, walking outdoors for recess. But on that day—with the weather not just cold, but also damp—Walsh’s teacher opted to keep the kids indoors.
“When we stayed inside for recess, we sat at our desks and talked, and some 8th Graders would come to our class and supervise us,” recalled Walsh, who had a long career as a truck driver and lives just outside Chicago.
“With the 8th Graders watching us, our teacher, Mrs. Foster, might take a break, and go up the second floor—our classroom was on the first floor—to the teacher’s lounge.”
Mrs. Foster did plan for a break. Maybe 10 seconds after she left the room, the school was rocked and those within it heard a loud noise. Power went out in the building.
Non-Precision Approach
Several operating events can result in an airline crash.Factors that led to the Flight 553 catastrophe appear to have started when Midway Airport’s air traffic controllers sought to create space between the aircraft and a slower plane in front of it.
They instructed the flight crew to do a “go around,” a fairly common procedure in which the plan does a pass of the airport before returning to land on its runway.
Flight 553 completed the go-around and as the flight crew prepared to land the plane, the captain employed spoilers, a braking mechanism to reduce aircraft speed. The spoilers seem to have been left activated for too long and the plane slowed, dangerously, and began a rapid descent out of which the flight crew could not pull out.
After all the data was analyzed and reviewed, the interviews concluded, and the investigation wrapped up, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) issued its findings that included its assessment the “probable cause of this accident was the captain’s failure to exercise positive flight management, during the execution of a non-precision approach, which culminated in a critical deterioration of airspeed.”
High-Profile Victims
Among those killed in the crash were three people who had public profiles.They were Michele Clark, the first black female correspondent for CBS News; U.S. Rep. George W. Collins, a Democrat who represented the Illinois 6th Congressional District; and Dorothy Hunt, wife of E. Howard Hunt, a former CIA Cold War spy who had been indicted the previous September for planning and directing the two bungled Watergate wiretappings of the Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington.
That Dorothy Hunt had $10,000 (about $69,000 in 2o22 money) cash on her when she died, and that Michele Clark had been investigating and reporting on the emerging scandal of Watergate, guaranteed conspiracy theories and wild conjecture.
Also, it was noticed that even before NTSB officials arrived at the crash, the FBI was at the scene.
It was rumored that the cash in Dorothy Hunt’s possession was hush money paid to her husband so that he would not expose more people involved in the Watergate plot, a network, and web of complicity that extended into the White House and included President Richard Nixon.
A Chicago private investigator named Sherman Skolnick made a lot of noise about the plane being purposely brought down to silence people who knew too much about Watergate—people like Hunt and Michele Clark.
Moment of the Crash
The room in which Mike Walsh and his classmates were seated had windows that looked out onto the street—so even though the school was without power the children had enough light to see each other.“Soon enough, Mrs. Foster came back into the room, and told us that there had been a small plane accident down the street and that we would all would have to stay at the school until our parents came and picked us up,” said Walsh.
“Then we saw, through the windows, people running down the street.”
At the moment of the crash, Mike Walsh’s mother Jean was a mile away, at the home of her sister, a hairdresser, and was about to get her hair done.
“My mother was a nurse, head of the overnight shift of the emergency room at Holy Cross Hospital, which is where the injured were transported. When she saw all the police vehicles speeding down the street she knew something bad had happened.
“And when she got the news about the crash, and the area where it happened, she was terrified that Hurley Elementary had been hit, and was about to get in her car and drive to the school. But then she learned the address of the crash, and she headed toward the site immediately.
“My mother made it to the site, and stayed and worked there through the night. And the next night she was back at her shift at Holy Cross Hospital.”
Fears Plane Hit School
It would be early evening before Walsh’s father John Walsh arrived at the school to pick up Mike and his brother.“At the time of the crash, my father was at his job—he was a computer systems guy—at a location in Chicago about five miles from where the plane went down. Just like my Mom, he had initial dread that the plane hit the school.”
That night, Mike and his brother stayed with their grandmother who lived a couple blocks away.
“We returned home the next day, and there were people and police cars and fire engines everywhere.
“To prevent the curious from outside of our neighborhood coming in to view the crash site, my Mom and Dad, and all the adults who lived in West Lawn, had to present IDs to police officers stationed in the street in order to make to their residence.
“We kids didn’t go over to the site for a few days, when the cleanup was well underway. But as soon as I got home that Saturday morning, I went up to my bedroom on the second floor and I looked out the window and there in full view was the tail section of a giant plane—in my neighborhood. It was weird—very weird.”
Temporary Morgue
Hurley Elementary School served as a temporary morgue for the victims of Flight 553.While conspiracy theories continue no plausible or credible explanation for the disaster, other than pilot error, has ever been advanced.
The area of West Lawn where on the afternoon of December 8, 1972, 45 people died—and which was rendered scorched, smashed, and littered with torn steel—has long ago been rebuilt.
There is not a single plaque or sign in the area that tells about what happened at the place.
But two of those who died that day are remembered in an enduring and prominent way.
Since 1974, students have attended the Michele Clark Academic Prep Magnet High School on the west side of Chicago.
The Collins Academy High School—established in 1976 and named for U.S. Rep. George W. Collins—educates young people in the Chicago neighborhood of West Lawn.
Friends Read Free