Managing Editor
As Christmas break from college neared in December 1972, I was excited to be flying home across the country and spending some time off over the holidays with my family. But I had no idea that my flight home on Friday, Dec. 8, 1972 would be one of the most chaotic but fun experiences of my life.
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| State Street in Chicago is decorated for the Christmas season in December 1972 when Ed Pierce was stranded there overnight when he missed his flight because of an avionics malfunction and a crash at Midway Airport delaying flights into O'Hare Airport. COURTESY PHOTO |
After sitting there and waiting to take off for about 45 minutes, an announcement was made that our airplane required mechanical repair. We were instructed to stay seated while airline mechanics worked to resolve the issue, and that the flight attendants would bring us complimentary food and beverages while we waited.
Since I was under the age of 21, I was not offered any alcohol but my other five friends on the flight had a few drinks while we were stuck there. By the time the plane took off an hour later, everybody was in a happy mood despite our flight being delayed by almost two hours.
About an hour into the flight, an announcement was made that a United Airlines flight had crashed on approach to Chicago’s Midway Airport, and that all air traffic into Midway was being rerouted to O’Hare Airport. It meant that our landing at O’Hare would be delayed by nearly an hour.
By the time we were finally on the ground in Chicago, all six of us from the fraternity had missed our connecting flights. Somebody had an idea that we should call a fellow fraternity brother nicknamed “Murph” who lived there to give us a tour of the city while we were stuck there overnight. He agreed to pick us up and another new adventure unfolded.
Our tour guide “Murph” was working in Chicago as a bartender and had grown up there. He said he would give us an unforgettable tour and proceeded to show us the shoreline of Lake Michigan, and we drove past the legendary Marshall Field’s department store, which was decorated with thousands of twinkling lights for the Christmas season. We parked and walked around the historic Chicago Old Town seeing hundreds of Victorian-era buildings and St. Michael's Church, which was one of the few structures to survive the Great Chicago Fire of 1871.
I marveled when we drove past the construction site for the Sears Tower which was eventually going to be 110 stories tall when finished a few years later. I also enjoyed seeing the Art Institute of Chicago, a building with vast collections of famous American artwork inside.
We kept driving until deciding to stop at a pizza place that “Murph” knew and we had a late evening meal while trying to determine if we wanted to return to the airport or do something else that night to pass the time.
Someone in our group suggested that we should go and hang out at the famous Chicago Playboy Club. We drove there but couldn’t get in because none of us were club members and I was underage. At that point, half of our group continued bar hopping with “Murph” but three of us were invited to go to another fraternity member’s home in the Chicago suburb of Wilmette. Although it was after midnight when we got there, we played cards with our fraternity friend, his mother and his sister, and afterward we all talked for a few hours before finally nodding off to sleep around 3 a.m.
By 10 a.m. the next morning our group had arrived back at O’Hare Airport, and I learned that the next flight to my hometown was at 11 p.m. that night. Rather than waiting at the airport for hours, the ticket agent suggested that perhaps I could get closer to my destination of Rochester, New York by flying to Buffalo, New York about 76 miles away.
Not having many options left to get home, I called my father to pick me up in Buffalo and I boarded the plane.
Outside the airport in Buffalo, I was greeted by my mother, my father and my brother and over the next hour and a half in the car on the way home, I tried to find a good excuse as to why I hadn’t called to alert them of my airline connection issues in Chicago. They told me they had been worried sick about me and were wondering if I had been murdered and could not understand why I had been unable to make a simple phone call to let them know I was OK.
I didn’t have a good explanation for them and agreed that I was wrong not to call or let them know my flight had left Chicago without me.
Looking back at these events 53 years later, overlooking their concern for me was a mistake. But what a time I had. <
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