Friday, September 23, 2011
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
Photo, Herald Journal, Saturday, Oct. 9, 2010
Photo of Friday night football action from 2010 season.
Saturday, September 10, 2011
Herald Journal, Thursday, May 5, 2011
Front page of Herald Journal from Thursday, May 5, 2011. Combined with article looking back at RMD Tri-Meet's history.
Herald Journal 9/11 Special Article, Saturday, Sept. 10, 2011
Up in the air
Local pilot was in the air at time of attacks.
El Paso to Chicago, a trip that Bruce Grove had taken plenty of times before, and his flight on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, wouldn’t be any different. That year would be his 33rd in the air, his 17th flying for American Airlines, and the flight would continue to be routine until the plane entered Kansas on its way north.
A fulltime resident alongside Lake Shafer and recently retired from his piloting career in August of this year, Grove’s position in the crux of that day’s events didn’t prevent him from getting the news the same way that most Americans received it. With communication between air traffic controllers, American Airlines and news radio transmissions, Grove was charged with piloting his plane while trying to glean information from as many sources as he had available. Brief spots of information, from the first notification of an accident involving a New York skyscraper to a fax from the company notifying pilots that one of their fellow planes had possibly been hijacked, Grove’s view of the day’s events would be no clearer until hours later.
“When the second airplane hit, it all kind of came together. Because initially, you kind of thought when they hit the World Trade Center, what kind of idiot pilot is that?” Grove said.
His concern would be much more immediate than what was transpiring on the East Coast. With the plane in the air, Grove and his American Airlines jet would be part of the massive grounding of all flights over the United State, a ban that would not be lifted for three days as international flights were diverted away from U.S. territory.
“At that point, I can’t remember if it was before the second airplane hit the other tower or not … but (the air traffic controller) started kind of randomly, as far as we could tell, picking airplanes and telling them they had to land right away,” Grove said. With the flight originating from the border town of El Paso, Texas, Grove pondered what threats might be coming his flight’s way, or whether the individual planes being directed off their planned courses were facing their own issues.
“Initially we thought that maybe there was some threat in those airplanes, and in the back of my mind I’m thinking, we’re coming from El Paso. It wasn’t an international flight, but we’re close to the Mexican border.”
The next several days would be a microcosm of what air travel has become in the 10 years since 9/11. When the ban on air travel was lifted, Grove and his copilot ferried the aircraft from Wichita, Kansas to Dallas, where then piloted a plane with passengers to Chicago the following morning. The flight to Dallas was a strange one for the pilot, who called it “eerie” to see no other flights in the air that he could monitor (a roughly 40 mile radius) and no one on the radio other than his air traffic controller on the ground.
Theirs was only the fifth flight in the nation that day.
Security procedures changed at a whim, as the massive apparatus that services our ability to travel across the country in hours instead of days faced its most arduous task to date. Grove reflected on that first flight with a full cabin, and while he didn’t know any of the flight crews associated with the attacks personally, it wasn’t hard to put himself in the same situation as he took off for home.
“You think of what they might have gone through, then you get on the airplane and it’s fresh in your mind,” Grove said. “You just kind of wonder what your reaction would be.”
In the years since, security has come under suspicion of going too far, as the public grapples with the decision to secure the air while protecting civil liberties. With programs like Federal Flight Deck Officer (which gives the option to qualified pilots to fly armed anonymously) and the focusing of Federal Air Marshalls around priority targets, Grove feels security will continue to evolve, but so will those who feel security goes too far as it is.
Grove admits to never having been scanned by the controversial body scan imaging machines, instead being directed to the more common X-ray detectors, but crews are still subjected to the same security treatment as passengers.
“People complain about that, but if they were involved personally in a situation like (a terrorist attack), they’d be the first ones jumping up and down because (security) didn’t do enough,” Grove said. “It’ll have to keep evolving and keep improving. I’m not sure where it will all end up going, but I can’t imagine where there will ever be a point where we say, ‘OK, we’ve got it covered now. We don’t have to worry about them anymore, just keep doing what you’re doing and we’ll be fine.’ ”
The foreseeable future for Grove won’t have many more takeoffs and landings, and sits fine for the recently retired Monticello resident. With wife Pam, Grove plans to see more of his daughter and grandchild, and with the winter coming, there will be more worries than security that are off of his mind.
“I look out and see nasty weather, and thinking about winter too, hearing about a snowstorm coming and I have to drive to Chicago,” Grove said. “Now I can just sit back and turn the heat up in the house and say, ‘Well, I don’t care. I don’t have anywhere to go.’ We’re having a good time in our short retirement that we’ve had so far.”
Part of a special section commemorating the 10th anniversary of 9/11.
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