SPEAKER_02 0:00

This is NBC Nightly News, Monday, December 17th. Reported by John Chancellor.

SPEAKER_15 0:08

Good evening. Arab terrorists struck again today in Rome, Italy, and in a chronicle of terrorism which took them as far as Athens, Greece, perhaps 35 people are dead tonight, including some Americans. It began when a group of Arabs with submachine guns sprayed bullets across a crowded departure lounge at Rome's Leonardo da Vinci airport. That was followed by the firebombing of a Pan American plane where 29 passengers died. The Arabs then hijacked a Luftanza jet, but for the Rome part of the story, here is a satellite report.

SPEAKER_03 0:48

The Pan American airliner was about to take off for Beirut when it was hit. Two incendiary bombs thrown by Arab terrorists. They reached the plane by surprising police at a security checkpoint and shooting their way through the airport's transit lounge. Most of the damage was interior. One bomb exploded inside the plane.

SPEAKER_05 1:11

You just heard a news report from NBC News on December 17, 1973, when many Americans learned the shocking news of a terrorist attack at the Rome Airport, where a Pan Am plane was firebombed and 30 passengers and crew were killed. This episode recognizes the 50th anniversary of this tragedy. We will be joined by two survivors of this terrorist attack that were on the plane in Rome. Pan Am Flight Engineer Ken Frang and Pan Am passenger B.J. Geisler. BJ is the author of the recently published book Terror on Pan Am Flight 110. There is a link in the episode description to purchase BJ's book. This episode is a follow-up to episode 6 titled Hijackings and the Dawn of Global Terrorism. If you haven't heard this episode, we encourage you to do so after listening to this installment. In order to understand the gravity of global terrorism throughout the 1970s and 1980s, it is important to examine the 1967 Six-Day War between Israel and neighboring Arab countries, the 1970 hijacking of four airplanes all bound for the United States, and as a direct result of those hijackings, the subsequent Jordanian Civil War, also known as Black September, and finally the Munich Olympic attacks in 1972. These topics are discussed in episode six. Before our interviews with Ken Frang and B.J. Geisler, let's learn a little bit more about what happened 50 years ago in Rome, Italy. Here's a report from CBS News on December 17th, 1973. The clip is about four minutes long, and note this original recording has some audio interference. Let's take a listen.

SPEAKER_13 3:05

From CBS News headquarters in New York, this is the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite.

SPEAKER_14 3:13

Good evening. 30 to 40 persons, including some Americans, have been killed by a band of Arab terrorists at the Rome and Athens airports. It's the worst incident like this so far. The day of terror began in Rome, and Burt Quint reports.

unknown 3:27

What's going on?

SPEAKER_04 3:28

A new chapter of air piracy and bloodshed began at Rome's International Airport today when men described as Palestinian guerrillas attacked on several fronts. They blew up this Pan American jet plane, but only as the second stage of a three-stage operation. In the confusion and panic, details were hard to come by. But police say the terrorists opened hand luggage for routine security checks at the departure lounge, took out machine guns, hand grenades, and pistols, and started firing. They forced six young Italian policemen at machine gun point to go with them. Then, some of them at least ran onto the field and entered the Pan American plane, already boarded by passengers headed for Beirut and Tehran. First officer, Robert Davidson, wounded in the attack, told CBS News correspondent Winston Burdett he thought the idea was not to frighten people, but to murder them.

SPEAKER_08 4:26

The airplane started filling up with smoke. I ran into first class and got behind the bulkhead. Where we have an ox galley. And the smoke. You couldn't see a hand in front of your face. It was just so dense. It was almost immediate how the smoke filled the airplane. And I started to go out of first class and it was just all red.

unknown 5:06

Here we are.

SPEAKER_08 5:07

And I didn't want to go running into the fire. Yet there wasn't anything else to do. This guy would have suffocated in the first class compartment, so I just ran towards the front of the airplane and went out through the front entrance door.

SPEAKER_04 5:21

Then the attackers raced to a Lufthansa plane that had arrived from Munich and had only its crew aboard. With their police hostages still in tow, they forced entry to that plane and took off with it to Athens. The bodies of those killed aboard the Pan American plane remained there for some six hours while officials examined the scene and tried to make some sense of the mass of shattered, charred bodies. Then, a picture of delayed horror, as the fragments of what had been airplane passengers were brought down the ramps, not on stretchers, but in sacks. Rude wooden coffins were pieced together for their use at the sides of the shell of the aircraft. For this particularly bloody incident, the Palestinians seem to be warning the world. No peace conference at Geneva or anywhere else can really bring peace unless they are accounted for.

SPEAKER_00 8:07

Next thing I heard was somebody's howling, Come this way.

SPEAKER_12 8:12

As evening came, a coroner's detail finally removed the dead. At a Rome hospital and at Athens Airport, the death toll was still mounting, making today's events among the most grim in the overseas war which springs from the Middle East. With the Geneva Peace Conference only days away, today's events gave tragic confirmation to fears that the Palestinian terrorists mean to be remembered at the peace table. This is Arnold Collins, ABC News at Rome Airport.

SPEAKER_02 8:39

Two of the men killed in the firebombing of the Pan American plane in Rome were Moroccan cabinet ministers. The Palestinian commando leadership in Beirut today denounced the hijacking and the bombing as contrary to the interests of the Palestinian people. A spokesman for the Palestinian Liberation Organization denied any responsibility for the attack.

SPEAKER_05 8:59

In the early afternoon of Monday, December 17th, 1973, at Rome's Leonardo da Vinci Airport, a Pan Am Boeing 707, registration number N407PA, named Clipper Celestial, was getting ready for departure with 53 passengers on board and nine crew members. Flight 110's destination was to be Beirut, Lebanon, and then on to Iran. At around 1251 local time, five members of a radical Palestinian terrorist group pulled out weapons from their luggage in the airport terminal lounge and opened fire, killing two people. They then ran out of the terminal on the tarmac. They attacked the Pan Am jet by running up the boarding stairs of the front and rear doors and threw three hand grenades inside the plane. A total of 29 persons, including four senior Moroccan officials and 17 Aramco employees and family members, were killed on the aircraft. Passenger Bonnie Priestnell died later at the hospital with severe burns, bringing the total killed from the attack on the Pan Am plane to 30. To remember those killed, we will have a moment of silence on this program, followed by Linda Frere, the board chair of the Pan Am Museum Foundation, reading the 30 names of the Pan Am passengers and crew lost on that December afternoon in 1973.

SPEAKER_01 10:39

The Pan Am employees and family. Diana Perez person. Rafael Narcisco, an Italian mining expert. Miss Rodriguez of Portugal. I Zutmund of South Africa.

SPEAKER_05 12:38

After the firebombing of the Pan Amplane, the terrorists took hostages and ran towards a Luftanza Boeing 737 jet nearby waiting to depart from Munich, Germany. They shot and killed an Italian customs and border officer before boarding the plane with five hostages. At gunpoint, they forced the Lufthansa pilots to take off and directed them to fly to Athens, Greece. When the plane arrived in Athens, the hijackers demanded the release of two members of the Palestinian militant organization called Black September that were held in a Greek prison. These prisoners attacked the Athens airport with guns and grenades and killed three people on August 5, 1973. The Greek government refused the terrorist demand. After 16 tenths hours, the hijackers dumped the body of a killed hostage and released another hostage that was wounded. The jet then took off for Beirut, Lebanon. Much like what happened in 1970 when a hijacked Pan Am 747 was attempting to land, Lebanese authorities blocked all runways with vehicles, but this time they refused to let the hijacked jet land. Ken joined Pan Am in July of 1967 as a navigator based in San Francisco after serving in the United States Air Force with one tour in Vietnam. In 1970, he was promoted to flight engineer and transferred to New York City. He transferred to Delta Airlines in the summer of 1991 and flew for Delta until retiring in 1998. Ken resides in Mesa, Arizona with his wife, Cynthia. Thank you very much, sir, for agreeing to be on the program. It's been 50 years since the incident in Rome on December 17th, 1973. Why don't we start at the very beginning? How did you get to Rome and what was going on a couple days before? And what were your plans?

SPEAKER_06 16:35

Well, I was flying as a flight engineer on uh the 707 out of New York. Pan Am put out an offering for a temporary base, just one month base in Tehran for the month of December of 1973. I had just married in in April. My wife was excited about doing that. So I bid for that. And for the month uh of December, we flew or I flew with the same crew, the same pilot, Captain, and first officer the entire month, which was unusual. Normally, when you've been a line of flying, you might fly with a different different crew every uh every trip. But for this temporary in Iran, we we stayed together as a crew for the entire time. Captain Irbeck and First Officer Davidson and I had flown out of Tehran early in the month on several trips. And the the uh pattern called for us to lay over in Barcelona, but for some reason the Rome, Barcelona portion was canceled, and we wound up overnighting in in Rome on every trip. Our wives, uh the captain's wife and my wife uh stayed uh at the hotel. We were staying at the Intercontinental Hotel in Tehran. We all had our individual rooms, and then we had a large common uh like a party room or conference room where we could all get together, different crews and and so on and socialize a little bit in between trips. I had flown with Captain Irvick and Bonnie previously on a trip, I believe it was uh down to Panama. They were just really nice people to fly with. So I was really having a good time flying with them, flying with him. And on this particular trip, uh, we left Tehran on December 16th, and it was the first time that uh Bonnie, uh Captain Urbeck's wife, and my wife uh along on the trip. And um we overnighted in Rome. We had made arrangements earlier with the captain and his wife to uh when we got back from this trip, we were gonna have a week off, and we would go down to Persepolis in Isfahan and tour that area, and after getting to Rome and having a very enjoyable evening with most of the crew going out to dinner and socializing, uh the uh captain's wife was uh uh a good uh piano bar kind of singer, and she just entertained us uh for a long time on that evening. When we got back to the hotel, my wife said, you know, I'd rather tour Italy than I would go down to Istfan. And uh I said, Okay, so we got up early in the morning and I found a pencil for her to stay in while I flew back to Tehran with the with the crew. And um we got back to the hotel and I called the captain's room and told them what we were doing, a change of plans, and asked that um uh maybe Bonnie would be interested in staying uh in a room with uh with my wife, and then we could tour Italy together. And she replied that they had uh been down to Istfan once before Persepolis, and she said it was really an interesting area, and she wanted to tour down there some more. So when we got picked up to go to the airport, I put my wife in a taxi to go to her pension, and the captain's wife got on the bus with us going to the airport.

SPEAKER_05 20:31

So it was just a normal, normal trip, normal day.

SPEAKER_06 20:34

Yes, yep, every everything was uh uh was as scheduled. My recollection is that there was a a change in the flight plan. I think we were originally scheduled to go to Beirut and then Tehran, and we had six foreign ministers from a country in North Africa on in first class on our flight. And uh we were supposed to make a stop in Istanbul for them to let them off. So I I just don't recall if uh we're gonna go from Istanbul to Beirut and then Tehran or skipping Beirut altogether. I I don't recall that. Other than that, everything was pretty normal. We dropped the captain's wife off at the departure point uh at the airport, and when we did that, we noted that there were a lot of Italian soldiers standing around with rifles and uh side arms and so on.

SPEAKER_05 21:31

And and was that normal?

SPEAKER_06 21:33

Um, well, it was sort of in the area. There was there was uh there had been problems in earlier years there, and um uh some of the airports had troops like that, others did not. We really didn't think a whole lot about it, other than making notice of it. And then we continued on with our crew bus to uh the area where where we disembarked uh from the bus and and went through uh. Uh immigration check and out to the airplane and did to do our paperwork and everything. So that was yeah, it was a pretty normal operation at that point.

SPEAKER_05 22:08

And then what happened?

SPEAKER_06 22:10

Well, um, we uh we were getting ready for departure. We didn't have a we we we didn't have a big load of passengers that time. I I think total crew and passengers on board was 67, as I recall. That included the flight attendants and three people in the cockpit. Uh we were we loaded all our passengers, and we were in the process of finishing up our fueling, getting close to departure time. The paperwork had not arrived yet to the airplane for the for the refueling. Um, that's when we first noted uh trouble. Um, I was sitting at my engineer panel, and uh uh Captain Irbeck and First Officer uh Davidson were both in their seats, and they were looking out at the front of the airplane, and Captain Urbeck said, What's going on out here? So I stood up and I bent over and looked out, and I noted that there were a lot of vehicles around service vehicles and so on around the front of the airplane, and people were uh running and getting behind them and looking towards the terminal. So I glanced at the terminal and I saw people running crouched over and diving for the floor and all sort of commotion like that. And uh so I just said to the captain that you know there seemed to be uh maybe there was some shooting in the terminal or something. And he got on the P right away and um told the people to there's a commotion, seems to be a commotion in the terminal, and everybody please stay away from the open doors and and the windows and get down. At that point, he and I were both concerned with people getting hit by uh stray rounds of fire.

SPEAKER_05 24:01

So at this point, you could not even imagine whatever was happening in the terminal would come over to your airplane.

SPEAKER_06 24:08

Well, you know, after seeing those soldiers with the arms, we really thought it was the good guys against the bad guys. If there was somebody uh shooting in the terminal, at the uh that that a lot of the gunfire we're hearing was from the soldiers shooting back. And it was quite some time after that we found out that uh they we were told, anyhow, that they had uh that the soldiers had no ammunition issued to them. So as I opened the cockpit door, as the captain is making his PA announcement, I opened the cockpit door, and as soon as I did, we could hear the gunfire. It was uh considerable gunfire at that point. And again, the thought of someone getting hit by a stray fire, thinking soldiers against somebody else, I was again concerned with somebody getting hit by stray gunfire and uh getting down low and staying away from the open doors and so on would create less of a target for them and/or a possibility. As I opened the cockpit door and heard all this gunfire, uh, was one of the flight attendants was kind of sauntering up by the door, and uh, so I made a comment uh, as the captain had, that you know, get away from the open door. And as I did that, the first officer and the captain had apparently come out behind me. I didn't see them at that time. But because of that flight attendant not taking things too seriously about the gunfire, I stepped right into the galley, grabbed the microphone, and I made the announcement again that the captain had made to stay away, stay down low, and stay away from the open doors and windows. With that, uh a flight attendant that was there said, I have to say that in Italian. I handed her the mic, turned around, and and Bob Davison was standing at the aft end of the uh front entrance, uh looking towards the terminal. And immediately, it as this is all happening simultaneously, turns around and says, They're coming at us with grenades. Get the door open, get the people out. And uh, so I hadn't even left the galley yet. I just spun around and opened the galley door. But because we were still refueling and uh had opened doors, the slide was not hooked up. Went down on my hands and knees, closed the door, and went on my knees to uh to hook up the uh the slide, the galley slide, uh to the uh little uh little C ring that was in the uh floor. And um and as I did that, I heard a clunk, clunk, clunk, and an explosion. And um the the there was a canister lying next to my left foot. It it kind of lifted me off the floor a little bit, but um most of the uh I did not get any shrapnel from it. And after seeing the canister, I'm thinking to myself, the only reason I'm not dead is because it wasn't a fragrenade, which is what I had anticipated when uh uh when the warning came from Bob Davison. So I opened the the galley door, the slide deployed and just hung there, did not automatically inflate. And with that, of course, the whole area was filling with smoke, and I know I considered the smoke to be uh uh fire. Uh and so I thought I have just have to get the uh wing exit open and get people out the wing exit. I'm not realizing that somebody's also going up the the aftboarding stairs, uh, but uh thinking that people wouldn't be able to get out up front because this terrorist is coming with grenades and and weapons and whatever. When that uh when that first grenade went off, uh I had noted that uh uh Bob Davison was standing in the aisle right by the galley behind me and on and behind him uh at the ox jumps, at the uh like a uh a um a table that uh was for first class passengers, a little lounge area. And the captain was there looking out one of the portholes. He was on his on his knees uh by that by the couch. It turned out that he got a little bit of shrapnel in his thigh, and Bob Davison got a couple little pieces in his neck and uh from the ex from that first grenade. So as I uh decided I needed to get a wing exit open, um, I just spun around and and uh I I think the flight attendant that was making the announcement in Italian, um she was on the floor. I don't know if she was conscious or not at the time, but but she did get out of the airplane, okay. But I I don't know exactly where she went or what her status was when I left the galley. But as I started heading towards the economy section of the airplane, a lot of the passengers in first class were in the aisle uh down low. Some of them were starting to stand up, and I was jumping over some of them and going around others. And as I got to the divider between first class and economy, a second grenade, powerful second grenade went off behind me. And um I don't know this for a fact, but my my thought at the time was that wow, that was powerful and probably a frag grenade. And um Bob Davison had taken refuge behind an ox galley on the left side of the airplane by seat 1A and uh kind of crunched in the corner there. And uh I don't know where the captain was, but uh neither one of them um uh were damaged by that second grenade nor the uh flight attendant that was in the galley. So I think that I was probably protected from shrapnel by people that were in the aisle, that I had gone around trying to get to the wing exit. And as I as I approached the divider between first class and economy, the aisle was full of people coming forward. And at that same instant, a grenade went off right about by the wing exit where I was headed on the right side of the airplane. And uh, when that happened, of course, there was more of a surge of people, and there was no way that I could get through them to the wing exit. So I wound up, I immediately jumped on the first row of seats on the right side of the airplane, went over the seatbacks until I got to the wing exit. As I got to the wing exit, uh I was getting close to it, I started motioning to people to follow me that were in the aisle and waving my arm towards them and and so on. And I got to the wing exit, opened the exit, don't know where I put the door, but um uh I stepped out on the wing and uh helped uh some people come out of the airplane out of that wing exit. And with them, I jumped off the uh the wing and uh and the back side of the wing and um and got them going towards the right wing tip and told them to keep running and get away from the airplane, and um, and then I went back and was helping people more people come off of the uh uh the wing, kind of catching them as they as they jumped off and so on, could because more people were coming out of the wing exit onto the wing and then down. And at some point, very quickly thereafter, I noted that the aft galley door opened. Uh John Parrott, who had was a Pan Am pilot also, hung by his hands from the floor of the galley and dropped onto the tarmac. And uh and then he came over and was helping me get people off the back of the wing. There were a lot of things that were going on simultaneously. Um, we noted uh, you know, a lot of flames or smoke and some flames coming out of the front galley. There was uh a lot of smoke coming out the wing exit. The exit at the aft galley had a lot of smoke coming out. And at that point, one of the flight attendants stuck her head out through the smoke. It was Sharon Dwyer, and um, she stuck her head out through the smoke, and that aft galley floor is quite a ways above the the pavement. We both yelled at her to jump, and she wasn't about to. She closed the door, hooked up the slide, and opened the door, and the slide inflated, and she came out, and a couple other people came out, and uh, the last person that uh we saw come out of that exit was uh a teenage boy that came out flying headfirst, like he was diving into a pool and landed about halfway down the slide. And and um he was the last one that we saw come out the right side of the airplane. While all this was going on, and the people were running away from the uh away from the airplane and past the right wingtip, other things were happening at the same time. I saw the um auxiliary power unit uh uh being disconnected. I saw a fuel truck that was under the right wing uh take off. It was facing towards the tail of the airplane, and it took off driving and made a left turn, a 180, and trailing a hose that was throwing sparks all over as it bounced along the pavement. My only concern there was that he was driving right through people that were running away from the airplane, but uh nobody was hit. And the fire truck arrived and they started foaming down uh the wings and uh some parts of the airplane. But uh, as we weren't getting any more people coming off the back of the wing, John Parrot and I got into a service vehicle and drove around to the front end of the airplane to see if we could do do any help there. We saw Captain Irbeck and Bob Davison there. And the I don't know where they uh if they came out the front entrance, or um, I've heard recently that they might have gone out the windows on the cockpit. I I I just don't know. I just saw them at the front of the airplane, at the front boarding stairs. There was there were no more people coming out of the airplane at that point. And um, I had what appeared to be some possible internal injuries, didn't know from the first grenade. And uh so I uh Captain Urbeck said I should go ahead and get in one of the ambulances there with that was taking people to the hospital. So I did that.

SPEAKER_05 35:42

At this point, did the captain know that his wife was killed? Yes. So let's talk about you. So you're in the galley, first class galley, and you hear this clunk, and the first explosive goes off, but it didn't have the frag grenade. What's going through your mind? This all transpired over a very, very short period of time. Uh what are you thinking about?

SPEAKER_06 36:14

Oh yeah, yeah, it was all just a few minutes uh from the time I opened the cockpit door until until the last person that that I saw come out the right side of the aft galley um was only just a few minutes. It all happened very quickly. Um what went through my mind, well, like I said, I when I heard a clunk, clunk, clunk, and and an explosion, and it kind of lifted me off the galley floor a little bit because I was down on my knees trying to hook up the the the slide to the the hook in the in the galley floor. And I and then I saw this canister lying next to my foot, my left foot. And um I remember thinking to myself that I'm alive because it wasn't a fragment, fragmentary grenade. And and that, and um, there wasn't time to be frightened of anything. All I was thinking of was trying to save people and get them out of the airplane. Um so that you know I what else went through my mind, um that that was it. It was just they weren't gonna come out up front with the guy coming throwing grenades and having weapons. Did not know at that point that there was somebody coming up the back boarding stairs, also. Uh John Perrot told me later that he was uh deadheading and he was uh didn't ride in first class, he was in the very aft-row of seats in economy. And at some point, uh, very shortly, the first grenade that came in in the back, I guess, might have been incendiary or smoke or something. John said he got out of the seat and he started going towards the aft boarding stairs, and he came face to face with the terrace that was up in the in the backboarding stage. And the guy had a handgun and pointed it at him and pulled the trigger and it went click. Wow. So he didn't know if it was misfired or emptied or what. Uh John immediately just went right to the galley, opened the galley door, and hung by his hands off the galley floor and dropped down to the tarmac. And that's when I saw him. And and somebody else recently has told me that they also had a weapon pointed at them and uh uh a handgun, and and it misfired or did not fire at any rate. And my thought is that it's possible they expended all of their ammunition in the terminal and uh and were aiming empty guns. I I don't know. Uh that's just speculation on my part. But uh it happened to John Parrott, and it happened to one of one of the passengers apparently that was out on on the other side of the airplane.

SPEAKER_05 39:21

So the captain tells you to go to the hospital. Yeah. And what happened? Did you go to the hospital?

SPEAKER_06 39:28

Yeah, he said, Well, there's nothing more you can do here. He said, Um, why don't you jump in an ambulance there with uh the some of the passengers that are going to the hospital and and um see if you you know get checked over. I uh had um considerable tinnitus. I had some blurry vision, I had um uh a lot of pain in my abdomen area from apparently from the explosion. So I went to the hospital with the passengers and uh got checked over, and they determined that there was no internal damage or anything, and and had more important, more serious issues to deal with. So they never really even checked me in or checked me out of the hospital. It just uh I walked out on my own and I caught a taxi and I went back to the Metropole Hotel downtown Rome, which was our layover hotel. Um, I called uh the Pension where my wife was, and uh she came and joined me at the Metropole, and uh the surviving passengers and crew were also brought to the Metropole. So we were all all the survivors that um that weren't in the hospital uh were in the lobby there of the metropole and talking about the incident, of course.

SPEAKER_05 40:58

What were people saying?

SPEAKER_06 41:02

Well uh a funny little thing happened uh to me. I'm standing there in uh in a crowd of people, uh little Italian man, um older gentleman, probably uh uh several inches shorter than I am, and I'm not very tall, uh came up to me and he rattled something off in Italian and grabbed my face and kissed me on the lips. And as a young male, I I was a little shocked, you know. And I I guess I stood there with my my eyes kind of wide open, and one of the flight attendants was standing next to me, and um she said he told he was thanking you for saving his life and his wife's life. And um uh that's the only time I've ever been kissed on the lips by another man. And uh and and I cherished it. When did you uh meet up with the captain and first officer? At the metropole there in the lobby. They they came in with other the other crew. There wasn't anything more they could do on the airplane at the airport. So they were all transported together to the metropole.

SPEAKER_05 42:22

And what was the captain like? I mean, he just lost his wife.

SPEAKER_06 42:26

He was uh strong.

SPEAKER_05 42:30

And how was your your wife at the time? Um she she was close to the captain's wife, but you you were close to the captain's wife.

SPEAKER_06 42:40

Um she was probably a little bit more emotional than uh than we were.

SPEAKER_05 42:46

And did the passengers and crew did they ever ask the question, you know, why did this happen? No.

SPEAKER_06 42:56

No, never heard that. Uh we heard later uh what had happened leading up to us being attacked was that uh uh five or six Palestinians had flown in from Libya to Rome on another flight and uh going from one wing of gates to the uh the other wing where we were. We were not at a at a uh jetway, we were at a hard stand out separated from the terminal. All the airplanes were. There were some long tables that um uh that they would have a Um security or customs people or whatever on one side. And then passengers went on the other side and would open up their suitcases, and the uh the Italian um authorities would look through the suitcases to make sure there were no bombs or or weapons or anything like that in them, and and then they would proceed. And uh we were told that these uh the Palestinians came to the tables, uh several different tables, and all opened up their suitcases at the same time, immediately pulled out automatic weapons and just started shooting in the air. And uh like I said, they there was considerable gunfire. It would not be possible to determine how many shots were fired, it was just continuous.

SPEAKER_05 44:54

So looking back, it's been 50 years since this incident. How did this change your life?

SPEAKER_06 45:01

Well, um uh in in several ways, I guess. Uh, one is I on subsequent trips, once I got back to flying, I bid trips that didn't go to Rome. And I happened to be on a cargo flight one time uh in Europe, and in flight we got rerouted to Rome. So I didn't have any choice. Went back to Rome, and and that was like getting back on the horse, you know, afterwards, after being thrown. And um just that first time was a little was a little tense, but um uh subsequent to that it was not a problem. And I I bid and I went back to Rome. But uh it was it was some some time period of months before I flew back into Rome, and that was not by choosing. Uh the other thing, two other things happened. I lived in Wisconsin at the time and had a small hotel uh in a small town there, and the uh Lions Club uh held their monthly meetings and dinner at my hotel, and I was a member of the Lions Club early in January. Before I went back to flying, a gentleman approached me that was in the Lions Club and he said, You know, we're having our meeting next week. Would you talk to the club and tell them what happened to you in Rome? And uh I really didn't look forward to that, but um, it would have been hard for me to say no since uh I was in the club and it was my hotel and everything. So I said, okay. So I put together a little presentation and gave that presentation at the meeting. And afterwards, uh another uh gentleman I knew came up to me and and he was in the rotary, and the rotary had a weekly luncheon set in my hotel. I was not in the rotary, however. And uh he said, Would you please talk to our group, our rotary group next week for our luncheon? Tell them what you just told us, and I said, Well, okay. And subsequent to that, I got uh invitations from other clubs, Boy Scouts, school groups, and so on, in maybe a two-county area there in Wisconsin. Uh, and so I did that for a couple of months. I would uh when I wasn't flying, I'd have a presentation at one of these groups. And prior to the first time talking to the Lions Club, prior to that time, I had a lot of self-crimination, recriminations or whatever you call it, um, about uh what I could have done to save more lives, um uh given better direction and so on. And and uh had nightmares and some sleepless nights over it. And uh after doing those presentations, I realized that uh I had done everything that I under the circumstances with the information that we had, that I had done everything I could to save lives. And um I no longer had self-doubts about it, I no longer had nightmares about it, and I was able to move on. And it was the the best therapeutic thing I could have had, I guess, uh, as I understand that some of the some of the crew who didn't experience something like that have had some real difficulties uh dealing with it over the years. Um, one friend, a flight attendant, is still uh suffering from memories. I I don't know what uh I didn't run into Bob Davison or John Parrott uh after that. Uh and they uh after the my furlough, I was recalled uh in the mid-80s when um Pan Am sold the routes to United Airlines in the Pacific, and it was my understanding that both uh Davison and Parrot went to United Airlines, so I have not had any more contact with them since that that time in Rome. Um I I don't I don't know how they dealt with it now and nor nor the captain actually. I I I did hear that from another pilot friend that saw him uh in San Francisco standing on a cliff, just kind of looking out over the ocean for a long period of time. And I was told that he he lived in Las Vegas, and I was told he was out jogging one day and had a heart attack and passed away in the early 80s.

SPEAKER_05 50:16

How about the surviving passengers?

SPEAKER_06 50:19

Um, only recently uh one of the passengers uh contacted me and I think wrote a book about it. She went out the uh left side of the airplane and uh had a very traumatic experience in the entire process, I guess, um, and has written a book about it. I didn't know any of the other passengers. Um I understood that uh the gentleman that came flying out the aft galley as the last we saw on the right side of the airplane, he and his sister were headed uh to visit uh their parents. Uh his dad worked for Aramco in Saudi Arabia. Other than that, and the Italian gentleman uh uh in the lobby of the Metropole, I really didn't have any other connection with any of the passengers.

SPEAKER_05 51:10

So you were part of a historical and tragic event in 1973. What message do you have for some of our listeners on why that was important, why it's important not to forget the people that lost their lives that day, and your experience?

SPEAKER_06 51:35

Well, it was an ongoing thing at that time. Um uh the year before there had been uh uh kidnapping and killing of some Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics. That was in 72. Um I know previously Pan Am had had a 747 hijacked out of uh Eastern Europe on a flight to New York, and it was flown to Beirut by the hijackers, um, demands and uh landed at Beirut and they loaded some more compatriots and some explosives onto the airplane and then flew it down to Cairo, and they they had the airplane wired with these explosives. And as the plane was landing in Cairo, uh the fuse was lit. I had an original Pan Am classmate that was on that flight, and um he said people were saw the fuse going, and before the airplane was even fully stopped, they were opening doors and inflating the slides and going out the airplane. So um this had been a problem going on for a long time. Of course, in the 60s there was uh trouble. I I just don't know where it where it will end. Uh it's still going on today, of course, with October 7th uh attack in uh in Israel and now the fighting going on in Gaza. I I just uh to my experience, this has been going on for 60 years, and uh it's just it it's a shame that that they can't learn to live together. Uh I don't know what else to say about that. Um people have died and suffered that had no connection with either side, and and just um killing has been done um in as terrorist actions, that really has not ever solved anything. And but it still seems to be going on.

SPEAKER_05 53:49

Well, sir, I would like to uh thank you very much for uh sharing your story. I know that these are difficult memories, but they're important, and you were part of this historical event. I thank you for uh sharing the stories with our listeners.

SPEAKER_06 54:07

Well, thank you for taking the time to uh put this together. I I I don't know what what it can be done as a learning experience other than uh to tell people that um whenever they fly somewhere uh the crew front and back, cockpit and cabin, uh will always be looking out for their best interests.

SPEAKER_05 54:37

Very well said.

SPEAKER_06 54:39

Evening on the 16th of December was a very joyous time. And uh it turned from an evening of joy to a day of terror.

SPEAKER_05 54:53

It's an honor for me to be able to tell your story. Thank you, Tom. Thank you. Take care. BJ Geisler was a 24-year-old passenger on Pan Am Flight 110 on December 17th, 1973, traveling with a large group of Aramco employees and family heading to Saudi Arabia for the holidays. She is the author of three books: Terror on Pan Am Flight 110, Headache, How to Survive a Head Injury, and the Mystical Marriage. BJ holds degrees in sociology and psychology and has certifications in drug and alcohol counseling and criminology and corrections. She is also a Willamette Law School Center for Dispute Resolution graduate. When BJ is not writing or researching, she studies ancient religions and languages and works with charitable organizations, especially those helping refugees and people experiencing homelessness. Thank you very much, BJ, for coming on the program to talk about this difficult topic after 50 years.

SPEAKER_07 56:02

You're welcome, Tom.

SPEAKER_05 56:03

So let's talk about the lead up to December 17th, 1973. What were you doing on your way to Rome? And then what was your destination uh afterwards?

SPEAKER_07 56:17

Well, um, I had gone to my parents home in Iowa. Uh, at that time I was living in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. And my neighbor across the street, Muriel Burka, asked me if I wanted to go to Saudi Arabia with her to visit her daughter and her family during Christmas. And also Muriel's niece Barbara was going. And I said, sure. In the interim, I got all my vaccines, got my visa, got my passport, and then I met them at JFK Airport in New York City, and there were 33 of us total in the group, and we flew to Rome and spent the day sightseeing, and then uh that night several of us went uh to the Piper Club dancing, and because of the oil embargo at the time, we didn't get back to the hotel until about 5 30 in the morning. So we boarded the charter bus, went back to the airport, and we met up with a lady from Belgium who also joined our group, making it a total of 33 people.

SPEAKER_05 57:44

How old were you at the time?

SPEAKER_07 57:46

24. Our plane that we were supposed to be on was a 747, and there was an ice storm in New York City, so that plane was grounded. And there were supposed to be uh 374 people on board, as I recall. And so what they did is they diverted a smaller plane that flew in from Nice, and so ultimately there ended up being 53 passengers on board and nine crew members. And before we boarded the plane, which was very late, um Russell Turner, who was 12 years old at the time, and uh his parents lived in Saudi Arabia, and we were kind of in charge of making sure that he got there safely. Actually went and bought life insurance and put his parents' name on the policy. And he kept saying, I've got a bad feeling about this. I think something's going to happen. And I said, Yeah, I had been dreaming about it. In fact, I had called my mother before I left New York and said, I've got a bad feeling about this. I feel like this plane is going to explode. And she said, Well, then don't go. And I said, But I'm supposed to. And I also called a girlfriend of mine in New York City who was an actress, and I said, Betty, I've just got a bad feeling about this flight. I think it's going to blow up. And she said, Well, then don't go. And I said, But I'm supposed to. So anyway, we were sitting there in the chairs waiting to board the flight, and I heard other people making comments about having a bad feeling about the flight. And finally they said, Okay, um, we're going to go ahead and board now. And the people in our group, plus the people who weren't in our group, all seemed kind of they weren't sure that they wanted to get on that plane. And as we were going past the table where the security people were, they weren't checking our purses, our bags, or anything. And Russell, who was next to me, said, They're not opening our purses or checking our bags. Someone could get a bomb on that plane. I said, I know, I don't think we should get on this flight. So anyway, we were at the uh, I believe it's the north end of the terminal. It was cloudy that day, so I couldn't see where the sun was, but we went down the ramp, and our group loaded up the back stairs of the plane. And in the back row from the left to the right was Russell and then Barb, and then Muriel, and then me, and then Robin, who was 16 at the time, Robin Hagard, and then Bonnie Presnell, who was 21. And in front of them were the Hildebrands, who were also from Iowa. And Charles Walker was in front of Russell.

SPEAKER_05 1:01:11

And these are all people of your group, correct?

SPEAKER_07 1:01:14

Yes. I decided to move forward to the middle of the plane because no one was sitting over there. And like I say, we didn't get back to the hotel till 5 30 in the morning. And I was tired. And so I said to the other people in my road, you guys want to move forward? And they all said no. So I moved forward to the left over the over-wing exit door. And then pretty soon Barb moved over to the seat next to the right overwing exit door. Then Muriel came forward and sat down in the aisle seat next to me and said, I want to pay you back for the souvenirs I bought because Muriel could not figure out the Lyra system. And so she paid me back. Then the pilot, the captain, Andrew Urbeck came on the intercom and said, Everyone get on the floor. There's some type of commotion in the terminal. Muriel got down on the floor in the aisle, and Barb got down on one knee, and she was looking out the windows, and I got down on my knees, and I was watching out the windows to see what was going on in the terminal because my side of the plane, I could see what was going on, and I could see people running inside the terminal. And the next thing the pilot said was, they're shooting in the terminal, get on the floor. And then I could hear, I found out later it was Laurie Hamill, uh, who was translating in Italian. Then I saw the terrorists coming out the door with hostages in front of him. They were holding them at gunpoint. The hostages had their hands on their heads, and they were marching the hostages down the ramp, and they were headed toward our plane. A man and woman terrorists came up the front steps, and uh a male terrorist came up the back steps, and they pretty much simultaneously threw bombs in the front and the back door. And from the back, one of the flight attendants said, Everyone move to the front, move to the front. When the grenade went off in the back, Muriel had started to get up, and the bomb knocked her down. I came up behind her and picked her up and started carrying her toward the front of the plane. Then I heard another explosion in the front, and then I heard this pop, pop, pop, pop sound, and I'm carrying her toward the front. And I to my right, I saw people lying in the aisles, and just as I got to about the second row, to my right, I saw this couple crouched down in the corner at the bulkhead. And I found out later they were on their honeymoon, happy honeymoon. And just then the terrorist whipped the curtain back, and I was literally face to face with them. And just then Muriel started falling to her left, and she pulled me down with her. And I could see things floating in the air. And then the next thing I remembered was I was on my hands and knees, and the smoke was pitch black, and I was feeling on around on the floor for Muriel, and I couldn't find her. I and I literally could not see my hand in front of my face. It was the smoke was so black and so thick. And I felt this tap three times on my shoulder, and I heard a voice say, It's time to go now. And I looked over my shoulder and I didn't see anyone there. And I knew it was not a human saying this to me. And I stood up and I was feeling And the next thing I knew I felt a wall. And I was gasping for air because at that time uh I found out later that the grenades they threw in were white phosphorus acid. And so I was inhaling that white phosphorus plus the uh material the seats were made out of, plus the fact that the plane was on fire and the plastic had become poisonous gas. And I heard this voice say, hold your breath. So I held my breath, and then pretty soon I felt a seat back, and I was feeling the seat back and moving from seat to seat back forward where I had originally been sitting. And pretty soon I saw like a tunnel of light. And one of the things I left out is as I was moving forward, I saw this crazy guy in a Pan Am uniform come through first class. This is before the terrorists came through. And he was climbing over the seatbacks to get toward the back of the plane. I found out later it was Ken Frang, the flight engineer. Ken had opened the door of the emergency door on the side I had been sitting in. And I went out on the wing and I found out in June of this year that it was Barbara Marnock who was out on the wing of the plane telling people to jump. The plane was going to explode. I jumped off the wing and fell down on my knees. And my uh camera and my visa and passport fell out onto the tarmac. And I heard a voice say, Don't lose your passport and visa. And I'm stuffing this back into my purse, and I stood up, and one of the terrorists was standing at the foot of the back stairs with a gun, and he pointed it at me and he pulled the trigger, and nothing happened. And he slammed the gun on his palm and he pointed it at me again, pulled the trigger, and nothing happened. And he stared at me for a couple of seconds, and then he turned and he ran to the Luftonsa plane. Now, the people out on the wing of the plane, some of them were like robots. Is the only way I can explain it. So like they were in shock, except for Mr. Wilson, who was with our group. He was frantic. His arms were flailing. He looked like one of those inflatable things like you see in front of a store that their arms are waving, trying to get people's attention. And his shirt tail was hanging out, and his hair was standing on end. And um what I had noticed as I was coming down the aisle, and as I got closer to that tunnel of light, was the people in our group who were still sitting in their seats, and they were clearly dead. They had already suffocated from the fumes. So what I did is I turned around. Barbara was still telling people to jump, and I was telling people jump, I'll catch you. Finally, we got some people to jump, and there was a woman who jumped first, and I kind of caught her, and then a couple more people jumped, and then I saw the pilots climbing out the cockpit window, the other two, the co-pilot and the captain. And I saw the flight attendant, one of the flight attendants, go up the stairs of first class and immediately turn around and come back down. And he came to the wing of the plane and he said, I'm the flight attendant. And he helped me pull people off the wing after everyone was off the wing that we could see. And then I thought, I'm going back on that plane to see if I can find Barb and Muriel and Russell and Bonnie and Robin. So I started for the back stairs and I got up a few steps of the stairs, and Bonnie and Robin stuck their head around the corner of the stairs or the doorway. And I said, it's okay, you can come down now that the guy with the gun is gone. And they came down the stairs, and it was the most horrific sight I've ever seen. They uh there was a horribly burned the grenade that the first the first grenade that was thrown in had landed on the seat I was supposed to be sitting in. And so they were next to that grenade, and their skin was literally on it robin. Her skin had literally melted off the end of her hands, and their hair was uh pretty much burned off, clothes were burned into their skin. Wow, and um we stood there for a while, and I saw someone kind of lurking behind the wheels, and I looked over to my left because something caught my eye, and one of the flight attendants, uh blonde-haired one, stuck her head out the overwing exit door, went back inside and then popped back out and jumped out, and she jumped off the wing on the other side and took off running. And then all of a sudden, all hell broke loose. Um, the terrorists were hanging out the door of the Lufthansa plane shooting at us with their machine guns. And Bonnie Robin and I took off running. I I also had asked Bonnie and Robin if uh I said, I gotta go back in and find Mariel and Barb. And they said, we already checked. Everyone's dead. And I said, Well, where were you guys? And they said, Well, we hid in the lavatory. And I said, Well, where were the flight attendants? And they said, Well, two of them hid in another lavatory. And I said, Well, where are they now? It's like everyone had disappeared, and we were out on the tarmac alone. So we ran and we hid under a truck, and there was an Italian policeman under the truck, and I said, Pull your gun, shoot, do something. And he said, No, I don't want to get involved. A woman stuck her head out of the door of the uh terminal and said, Get out from under there. You're under a gas truck.

SPEAKER_10 1:13:55

Oh, wow.

SPEAKER_07 1:13:56

Yeah. So we climbed out from under the truck and we took off running. And you got to keep in mind our lungs are scorched, and we're wheezing like bagpipes. I mean, we're burned. We ran up the ramp and the doors were locked, and we were banging on the doors, no one would open the doors. We ran back down the ramp, and we tried the doors underneath, and a woman crawled through bullets and breaking glass to open the door for us. And we crawled inside and just laid flat. And I said, We've got to get to a first aid station, and she said, It's behind that green wall over there, and we crawled through this glass and bullets flying to this wall. And I remember standing up and plastering up against that wall and just going, Oh my god, we're finally safe. And we went in the first aid station, and um, there were I don't know how many, probably two dozen people in there who were just in shock. And there were only two other people there from our group, and I didn't recognize anyone else. And when I look back on it, I think there were probably people who got caught in the gunfire inside the terminal. But Bonnie Robin and I were the first ones taken away in ambulances, and then when I got to the hospital, um I was out of it from I probably got to the hospital about two o'clock in the afternoon, and I didn't wake up again until it was dark out. And a nurse told me that she said, We I was in a ward when I woke up, and she said, Well, we moved you in here now because you're stable, and I have no clue where I was before that, but I was in and out for hours and all night long, and uh about 11 o'clock at night I woke up and there was a reporter there from the London Times, and she found a list of survivors and those still missing, and uh 17 people I knew were on the list of still missing, and she said Bonnie and Robin were in the intensive care unit in the same hospital I was in, and then she stayed there with me for several hours, but then the next morning when I woke up again, uh, there were two men there from the State Department said we're getting you out of Italy because we don't know who they're after. And I asked about Bonnie and Robin, and uh she said they said Bonnie had died the night before. And I found out later that Robin actually saw Bonnie die. They were in the same room together, and they were first cousins, and I don't know how Robin survived. She, I mean, she was in intensive care for weeks. The guys from the State Department shoved me into a car, took me on a circuitous route through Rome, ran me through a tunnel, put me in another car, and finally got me to the airport, put me in the first class lounge, and I was ultimately taken to a pan Am plane. And um, I flew back to New York in this Pan Am plane. And about half hour into the flight, one of the flight attendants said, Um, somebody up in first class wants to talk to you. So I went up into first class, and lo and behold, it was Laurie Hamill, the blonde-haired flight attendant, who I saw poke her head out the door when I was standing down on the tarmac talking to Bonnie and Robin. And she told me what had happened, and she was the one who was translating into Italian what pilot was saying. So when the first grenade went off, it instantly killed Diana Perez, the purser, and it threw Laurie from the door past the galley into the area where the first row of seats were. And because the people had been told to move to the middle of the plane, the people were standing, running, and they fell on top of her. And she was at the bottom of that pile of people, and she said when she came to, she yelled at them to get off of her, and she said she grabbed a shoe and moved it, and the only thing in the shoe was a foot. She grabbed a hand and it was attached to nothing. I also learned that um there was a third grenade that went off, and that was after that terrorist. He threw that third grenade when he came through that curtain. And then as he exited the plane out the back, he threw a bomb that blew a hole in the roof of the plane. So I don't know how long I was out. I do know that the plane was on fire, and when I came to it was pitch black in there. And the other thing is when I was moving back toward that tunnel of light, the flight attendant Franco DiMarca was running toward the exit, overwing exit, and he exited out the right side as I exited out the left exit door. That's what happened to Lori. And then when we got to New York City, amazingly, the captain of that flight said, everyone stay seated until we tell you that you can get up. And people actually obeyed. And the flight attendants came and got me and Laurie. And then there was a third person that I did not find out until June of this year was Barbara Marnock, the flight attendant who was out on the wing of the plane telling people to jump. And the three of us exited the plane, and um, men from the State Department met us at the jetway and took us through customs and stuff. Of course, I'm the only one that had a passport at that point because Barbara and uh Lori's all of their stuff was burned. It was still on the plane. They took me to of all the crazy places, the Pan Am Hotel for the night, and I was ordered to not leave my room or to go with anyone or talk to anyone. They said someone would be at my door at 5 a.m. the next morning. And at about 10 minutes to five, there was a knock on my door, and I looked out, and it was two men from the State Department, and they uh took me to the heliport in Manhattan and put me on a helicopter and flew me to Newark, took me on a circuitous route around the United States to my parents' home in Iowa. And uh from there I lived in hell for many years because of nightmares and uh guilt.

SPEAKER_05 1:22:10

Let's talk about the guilt part.

SPEAKER_07 1:22:15

Yeah, it's um survivor's guilt terrific. I know uh Ken and I have Ken Frang and I have discussed it, and Barbara Marnock also, and Laurie and I stayed in touch for a long time, and that's the the worst of the worst. It's like, what could I have done more? And I survived, and uh these other really good people didn't, and so what I did is I self-destructed for many years until I found a really good therapist who uh helped me put myself back together. But uh yeah, it was uh I have a really soft spot for people who come back from Iraq or Afghanistan or Vietnam or wherever who uh you know they talk about CTSD and survivor's guilt, and uh you know, it's just it's horrific. Uh you just it's like every day you you feel like something on the bottom of a shoe that you can't get off. I lost 17 friends that day.

SPEAKER_05 1:23:39

Let's talk about your 17 friends that you lost that day. It's been 50 years. How would you like them to be remembered?

SPEAKER_07 1:23:50

Well, let's take for example, one of the um girls who was on the flight, her name was Janie Kirby. Janie was 19 years old. She went to school at Harding College in Searse, Arkansas. At the 40th anniversary, Harding College had a memorial for her. Janie was maybe one of the more positive human beings on earth, other than Muriel and also Bonnie Presnell. And so there are different pockets that keep these people alive, but as a rule, let's say, for example, Janie's brother Randy, who survived, he couldn't talk about it for 40 years. And he was he's married to a therapist, and his wife helped him to finally be able to talk about it. And I finally got in touch with Randy a few months ago, and Randy and I have talked quite a bit, but I went for a long time between the interim of stopping talking about it, and I would say there's a dozen people between then and now who I've told this story to. And then finally, I wrote the book, Terror on Pan Am Flight 110. Because I think if if we remember these people and what happened to them, maybe we can get people to start sitting down with our fellow human beings and start discussing what we have in common. What are our hopes for our children and our grandchildren and our future generations, and approach it from a viewpoint of love rather than of hatred and judgment or distrust.

SPEAKER_05 1:25:47

How did your parents react when you saw them after this tragic incident?

SPEAKER_07 1:25:54

Well, my parents' marriage was kind of on the rocks at the time, and uh my dad was actually in Omaha, Nebraska at that time on business. And he heard about it, he saw it on TV. The irony of that is that right then was a trucker strike, and the truckers had shut down I-80, so he couldn't get back to the middle of the state where home was, and he was frantic, and he pulled up behind a semi and he told the semi-driver, my daughter's on that airplane. I don't know if she's dead or alive because I was actually listed as one of the missing because they didn't know where I was. The truckers radioed ahead and they let my dad through and he drove through a snowstorm. It's about a two and a half hour drive home. When he got home, is when he found out that I was still alive. So that whole time, I mean, he was just in a panic, you know. Back then they didn't have cell phones.

SPEAKER_05 1:27:09

Looking back over these 50 years, uh, and thinking about yourself before you boarded that airplane, what would you like the world to know about BJ Geisler?

SPEAKER_07 1:27:26

You know, it it it turned me into a completely different person. You know, the person I was before that, oh my gosh, I just I was just having so much fun in life. And after that, you know, I didn't trust anybody. I I had PTSD so horribly that uh even the slightest sound, uh, a backfire, a sudden flare up of flames, I would hit the ground. I found an exceptional therapist who uh helped me. get things put back together again, but it was that didn't happen until uh the nineteen uh eighty seven when I found him. So I spent about fifteen years just in pure hell.

SPEAKER_05 1:28:13

Why did you uh decide to write this book?

SPEAKER_07 1:28:16

It was kind of cathartic. And also uh people needed to know what was happening back then. And it was also because I needed to tell the story for the people who couldn't tell the story. And I talk about that the people don't have a voice, the ones who died. And also you know like the uh the families of the people who died um this happened on December seventeenth. I there were so many funerals the few days before Christmas and I was on the phone with families all over the United States calling me what did you guys do in Rome? Were they happy? Where were they sitting That must have been extremely difficult how did you cope with that I drank I became an alcoholic I did that for many years and I celebrated thirty nine years of sobriety back in September.

SPEAKER_05 1:29:47

Oh congratulations What message do you have for people either veterans or people of police fire first responders that have gone through traumatic experiences. What message do you have for them?

SPEAKER_07 1:30:05

It's interesting you bring that group up because I became an EMT after that and uh because I didn't want to be in another situation where I couldn't help someone who was hurt while I was in therapy I realized I was doing that in an effort thinking maybe I could bring those people back. Once I realized that it occurred to me I didn't need to do that anymore. Those people were gone I think that was one of the um it was sort of like the teeter totter tilted a little bit that day and I was actually watching a Steven Spielberg movie called um Empire of the Sun and the little boy um his Japanese friend had been killed by um the American and he was doing CPR on him and it was like I can save all of them I went oh my gosh that's why I became an EMT thinking I can save everyone also the irony is while I was an EMT no one died the weirdest thing. Anything else you'd like to add to this discussion well the book's available on Barnes and Noble Amazon um Kindle electronic devices uh called terror on Pan Am Flight 110 by BJ Geisler for those who are suffering with PTSD and alcoholism find an AA meeting don't give up there is help out there and also in the book I've got um the Pan Am Survivor and deceased list and I also have got the um US Embassy Deceased and Survivor list and they don't mesh which was really annoying because but that's how I found Randy. I thought Randy had died. I mean I was so brokenhearted. And lo and behold I found I went in just to see if they had done anything um with that Harding College and lo and behold it said Randy and his wife Janelle and their three children attended uh Janie's memorial and I was like what and so I I was able to track him down finally through his church. And lo and behold he works at his church.

SPEAKER_05 1:33:10

That's well, you know there's some uh good stories in this yeah and um yeah if I'd gotten hold of him 10 20 30 years ago he wouldn't have talked to me because he could he could not talk about it. Well BJ, I just want to thank you again for coming on this program. I know the topic is very difficult and these are very difficult and tragic memories for you. And I really appreciate you uh coming on the program and sharing your story. Well thanks Tom I really appreciate you doing this because uh this really does need to be historically documented and hopefully this will help what I've said will help stop some of this uh hatred in our world we are going to conclude this episode with a report from CBS News from December 18th 1973 the day after the Rome airport attack thank you for listening to the Pan Am podcast from CBS News headquarters in New York this is the CBS evening news with Walter Kronkeit.

SPEAKER_14 1:34:22

Good evening the latest saga of Arab terror in the air is over the band of five Palestinian guerrillas who began their murderous rampages at Rome's airport yesterday finally surrendered in Kuwait, the oil sheikdom on the Persian Gulf. They left in their wake 32 known dead eleven of whom were known to be Americans. 31 of those victims died in Rome, most of them on the bomb Pan American liner. At Athens Airport the guerrillas tossed one murdered Italian hostage from their commandeered Lutan Sajet. They claimed to have killed four other hostages as they sought and the Greek government refused immediate release of two Arab guerrillas previously jailed there. When the plane finally landed at Kuwait today there were no dead hostages aboard and that part of the Arabs' claims may have been a hoax. Kuwait didn't want the guerrillas any more than Lebanon which refused them landing and Syria which only permitted them to refuel. Kuwait drove jeeps onto the runway to block the landing but the big plane set down anyway, damaging some of the cars. One of the terrorists told reporters we are proud of what we did. We are not criminals the criminals are those who bomb Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon Kuwait did not say what it planned to do with the guerrillas. By satellite we have a report from the band's 14 hours in Athens Dean Braylus reporting no one saw the Arab terrorists in Athens.

SPEAKER_09 1:35:45

They stayed inside the aircraft and communicated their demands via the ship's radio to the control tower. This morning they threatened to throw their hostages out of the plane when it was airborne and then forced the aircraft to crash into the heart of heavily populated Athens. They demanded the release of two civilian buildiers who at the same airport four months ago killed four people and wounded forty six the demand that was met immediately was the one asking for refusing the airport two and helped severely wounded Italian hostage on the stairs. The Stuart has returned in science on the runway there was this shocking evidence that the homage begun in Rome had continued in Athens. This Italian hostage was killed in the plane while it was here the body was held up by the terrorists until the aircraft report no one dared go near it. The point for having the hijacked aircraft and the terrorists leave Athens was a compromise.

SPEAKER_14 1:36:54

The Greek government told the terrorists it would bring the two Palestinian guerrillas to a speedy trial and then send them out of Greece free of the murder charges hanging over their heads CBS News Athens using phrases such as a savage crime and a reckless conspiracy the Arab world has universally condemned the hijack murders and the Palestine Liberation Organization denounced the action saying quote ultimately such acts serve schemes hostile to our people. In Moscow the attack was called outright banditry and a tragic incident. In Washington President Nixon used words such as outrage, vicious crime and senseless violence in his denunciation