S2 Ep 3: She Survived the Miracle on the Hudson — and She's Still Fighting for You | Denise Lockie

On January 15, 2009, Denise Lockie boarded US Airways Flight 1549 at LaGuardia Airport — a routine Thursday afternoon trip home. What happened next would become one of the most remarkable survival stories in aviation history. In this episode of Bench to Bold, Denise joins Marnie and Alisa to walk through every moment: the hostile corporate merger that put her on that flight, the thunderous noise at 3,200 feet, her eerie calm while the cabin erupted in panic, the upside-down evacuation slide, pulling strangers from the icy Hudson, and a Today Show appearance she did in fireman's pants with no luggage, no ID, and no lipstick. More than a survival story, this is a masterclass in grace under pressure — and why Denise has spent the 17 years since fighting to make aviation safer for everyone.

EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS:
00:00:07 — Meet Denise Lockie  Marnie
00:01:00 — Corporate Career & The Merger  Denise describes her high-flying sales career
00:05:34 — Seat 2C  Denise boards as the first passenger
00:07:34 — 3,200 Feet Over New York
00:10:52 — Mentally calculating whether she could survive in the water and what it would take
00:14:09 — Prepared for Death  Denise reaches a moment of total acceptance
00:18:05 — Down the Slide Into the Hudson
00:21:25 — Calling Her Sister From the Raft
00:28:34 — The Today Show, No Lipstick, and Fireman's Pants
00:42:20 — Closing Message

ABOUT DENISE LOCKIE:
Denise Lockie is a Charlotte, NC-based survivor of US Airways Flight 1549 — the "Miracle on the Hudson" — and one of the most active aviation safety advocates to emerge from that flight. Seated in 2C on January 15, 2009, she was among the 155 passengers and crew who survived after Captain Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger executed an emergency water landing on the Hudson River following a catastrophic dual engine failure caused by a bird strike. In the years since, Denise has channeled that experience into tireless advocacy: she is the only woman currently working in aviation safety at her level, she is working with the FAA on ARC reauthorization, and she serves on the boards of multiple aviation safety organizations. She is a regular speaker at the Sullenberger Aviation Museum in Charlotte — where she appears in the museum's video and has donated personal artifacts from the flight — and is a member of the National Air Disaster Alliance. Most recently, Denise joined the Association of Professional Flight Attendants (APFA) in opposing FAA-approved cuts to minimum flight attendant staffing on widebody aircraft. She also mentors emerging professionals and continues to fly regularly — always in natural fibers, always paying attention to the exits.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:07

All right, welcome to Bench to Bold. Today we have Denise Lockheed. She was actually a passenger on flight 1549 that landed in the Hudson, and we want to hear all about it.

SPEAKER_00 0:20

Well, it's 17 years later, and every time I speak at the Sollenberger Aviation Museum, if you haven't been, I recommend it highly. Please come out as my guest. I'm on the video and they have all interactive equipment, and you can see all personal artifacts of passengers that were able to donate their prized possessions to the museum. It was an unusual day, very unusual day. The first, obviously the first week, second week of January, right after the election, President Barack Obama was being um being put into the presidency four days later. It was a big time. It was during the financial breakdown, the crisis, everybody was losing their jobs. I work for corporate America. We were acquired by a large corporation right before the financial breakdown. And I think that they let go about 15 to 20,000 people. I was safe, or so I thought. I will I was safe, but it was very, very stressful. If you can look back at that time period in our lives when you really didn't know what was going on, we were the last ones to know. And after the financial market collapsed and all the all the acquisitions of the major corporation that bought us, we were a European company. I was on my way to Amsterdam for a six-month sales and marketing team. So needless to say, I was very excited. And that was IxNay because of the merger. It was a hostile merger, hostile takeover, although the board did accept it, even though we were a foreign-based company. So I was informed right before December, right before Christmas, that I was gonna be kept on with the leadership team. And that was great. But we had all these new rules and regulations and contracts and pay discrepancies, and you had to take a pay cut, and you need to do this, this, and this to maintain your career. And I'd been there for a long time. And I was at the startup of one of our divisions that basically grew our business from $30 million a year annually, I used to say it really quietly, to over $2 billion worth of business. And we're a $19 billion corporation. So January 1 came, and the name changed, and everything changed, and the credit cards and the travel policy and hotels. I traveled literally every single solitary week for 20 years. I could sometimes be on a flight four to six times a week, sometimes even more than that. I literally lived in an airplane. I went up and down and up and down to save $100 to get to my destination that took 14 hours to get there. And I thought to myself, well, that's a little insane because we had a mechanical and I didn't get back into the hotel until four o'clock in the morning. I had an eight o'clock meeting. I'm not good at eight o'clock in the morning when I have no sleep. So a week later, I had another trip. It was a very large trip because I spent a lot of time in finance. So I had to go to all my large banks in New York City and I had several meetings with Bank of New York, Mellon, Citigroup, and on and on. Took my clients out to dinner. Then, of course, there was a huge snowstorm, and my phone started ringing off the hook. It was legacy U.S. Airways. Well, we're gonna probably cancel tomorrow. There's bad weather. We just, you know, I was at the top of the food chain back then. They, you know, they cared about those paying passengers or those corporate travelers. And I said, I'm I'm fine with it. You know, just let me know and I'll just get out to the airport, I'll call my car service and go. And I talked to my sister. My father at that time was oh, just let me think, 95 years old.

unknown 4:16

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 4:17

And he knew I went to New York pretty much every single week or maybe twice a week. And, you know, when you get that old, you don't talk to your parents every single day, but I talked to them three or four times a week. So I was hesitant. I was kind of like, ah, you know, I can always stay an extra day. It was windy, snowy, crappy, but I love that. It's a great time to walk down Fifth Avenue and go window shopping. So I made the executive decision because we were literally on January 1, a new company. I said, I gotta follow all the rules. So I called my car service, I went to the airport, everything was backwards. Literally. Everything. You used to always go out of one area at LaGuardia and they had changed it that day. You always used to go out of the shuttle and they changed the gate at the last minute, they changed everything. And being that it was the coldest day of the year, and it was cold. And I'm accustomed to cold because I grew up in the Midwest and spent my summers and my winters in Massachusetts with my mother's family. So I like the cold. I thought, okay, I can do this. So I went. Then I scurried down to the gate and then they changed the gate. And then I scurried down to another gate and they changed the gate. And I know that never happens, right?

SPEAKER_02 5:33

Yeah, never.

SPEAKER_00 5:34

Never.

SPEAKER_02 5:34

Maybe a hundred times. Never.

SPEAKER_00 5:36

I mean, on commercial, it never happens. Never. So I was the first person who boarded the plane. I sat down. I was in 2C, and I just watched all the I love to watch people, my people watchers. I love to watch people, and it was all business people, which is nice. It was Thursday afternoon, 2 o'clock, 245. Everybody's coming home from working in New York for the week. I'm looking at all the businessmen. They have their suit and ties on, and all the women, very few children. There was technically two children that we've been able to find. The other two we'll never have contact with because there was no manifest. So I'm watching all the people walking down, and my seatmate, the infamous Mark Hood, Mr. Mark Hood of South Carolina, was my seatmate. I don't think he's a relationship.

SPEAKER_02 6:26

No relationship.

SPEAKER_00 6:27

But um, he's an incredible man. He had a Citadel ring on, which I noticed, and he had a Marine Corps ring on that I noticed, and he was a big burly guy. So I kept my conversation short with him because I knew we probably were gonna talk a little bit because we were delayed for so long. But anyway, we developed a little bit of a back and forth before we took off. And he had said to me, Are you nervous? And I said, You know, today for some reason I'm a little shaky because the flight was delayed, a new job, a new career, a cut in compensation. Yeah, a lot going on. And feel free to interrupt and ask questions too. No, I'm fascinated. Amazing. And when we finally took off, I think we were number 23 for takeoff, nothing unusual. And we finally got up in the air, and I was okay. I was totally fine. I was talking to Mark a little bit. We were talking about the inauguration coming up the following week, and I was thrilled. I was very, very happy about it. He wasn't, and I just kind of, you know, just took it for granted. I'm never gonna see the guy again, you know, no big deal. And 90 seconds up 3,200 feet. There was this incredible noise. And being that I was in the air during 9-11, I thought to myself, oh God, no, not again. My sister lived in Manhattan at the time. She lived in Midtown. I'd been in New York my entire life. It's my favorite city. Mine too. Let's go. Um, I love the city. I love the energy. I like the positive vibes. I like the fact that people are kind. They always get a bad rap, but it's really not true. It's a tourist that causes issues. But I think true New Yorkers are very respectable and are extremely helpful. So I just um I just didn't understand what was happening at the time that it was happening because I couldn't see. I was in the front of the aircraft, I was in 2C, and Mark was next to me in the window. He actually wanted my seat, but women power, I got it before him. He was an aisle sitter, but I'm an aisle sitter. So we had to, you know, flip a coin. I got it, of course. And I I kept wondering, I kept saying to myself, I I didn't make my bed before I left the house. Not that I care. But my family's gonna go to my house and they're gonna find my bed unmade and maybe maybe some clothes on the floor. Who knows? Maybe some fruit in the refrigerator that was past its who knows? I'm very clean housekeeper, but sometimes you just go. And my career is very, very important to me. I loved my love my career, absolutely loved it, and I was in the prime. So needless to say, after the the horrible, horrible, horrible stench in the cockpit, I didn't know what it was. And there wasn't any speculation. I mean, people said, oh yeah, I figured that's what it was, but nobody really knew. Nobody knew. And I was in the front, so I was able to hear the cockpit. And I knew when we went over the George Washington Bridge, because I could see it, to think, oh, wait a second, because my office was in, I had an office in um the financial district on Broadway, and I also had an office in Fort Lee, New Jersey. So I would go back and forth. So I was very calm because I thought it was absolutely a 9-11 event. And I know that my sister at that time had been living in New York and she had lost friends in it. And my office in Manhattan was literally, literally across the street from Bank of New York Mellon on Wall Street. So they had called us during 9-11 and came over to our offices in the West Side Highway. Because who has an office on West Side Highway? It's kind of like artsy funky neighborhood. So I realized in my mind it was an attack. I was very calm, cool, and collected. And the people around me were screaming and praying and taking out their cell phone. There was a great deal of panic. I remember pretty much everything that happened, and then I have some areas where I have absolutely no recollection. But the gentleman across the aisle from me, his name is John Howell, and he swore at the top of his lung, I won't repeat it here on air. He said, My mother's gonna lose another child in New York. And I thought, that's interesting. Didn't know why. His brother was a firefighter in 9-11 and was killed in the towers. There was another gentleman in front of him. So I'm in 2C. So I look at my seat mate, I look at the gentleman in the first row of the aircraft, and I look at the gentleman across from me, kind of to see how their reactions are after the explosion. The gentleman in the front is very prominent in Charlotte. Um, he owns Rod Ventures, in case you you've heard the name, I'm sure. He's a big basketball and football fan. And I watched him, I watched John, and there was a first officer coming back from an international flight from American Airlines. This was U.S. Airways, so they hadn't combined yet. And she had literally gotten the other seat in first class, and a lot of the chairman's preferred were not happy because she was coming back on a trip. I'm fine with that. I could care less. She needs to rest. So I knew that there was, I knew it was a situation that I had a choice. Can I swim? Yes. Will it be cold? Yes. What do I need to do? Take off my clothes. Not at that point, but in order for me to survive, if I got into the water, in my mind, I could have swam to shore. Now I left off the port side of the plane. Now that would have been to the Manhattan side. Could I have done that without getting hypothermia? Probably no. But I thought that I could, but then I started thinking about all the other situations. The plane's gonna flip. We have we're filled with jet fuel, something's gonna happen. And I remained calm the entire time. The entire time because all I was concerned about was my father. I'd lost my mother before, had she been alive. I can't even, there's no words that explain to how my mother would have reacted. None. Absolutely none. None. And my father was so devastated, we couldn't talk about it because he was a veteran in World War II and he would never talk about trauma. So once we didn't realize what was going on, and prior to the evacuation of the flight, Captain Sollenberger came on the PA right after I am sitting in my seat listening to terrain, terrain, pull up, pull up. Well, you girls, you've flown a few times. You've had probably scary incidents, a little turbulence, a little something, a little miscalculation. We've all been through it. I'd never been through anything like this. This was this was life or death. So I just remained very, very calm and I said, if I don't make it, it's okay. You were at peace. I was totally at peace.

SPEAKER_02 14:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:21

Because my mom was already gone. Had she not been gone, it would have been very different. I was concerned about my sister and my family, but I really I had the intuition that if I could save myself, I could save other people. And I wasn't afraid of the water.

SPEAKER_03 14:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:40

And that's because when I was two years old, I was thrown into the lake. I learned how to swim in an early, early, early childhood, and I was a competitive swimmer. So I wasn't terribly concerned, with the exception of the hypothermia. And I didn't have a bathing suit on. So when we when Captain Sollenberger came out of the cockpit and said, brace, brace, heads down, stay down, or he, excuse me, he commanded the flight crew, and at that time was an Airbus 320 EOW is extended over water. Thank you. Thank God we had that type of aircraft. Because not every single plane that goes over water has EOW. Now what does that mean? Extended over water. So they have life jackets and all the equipment necessary for a rescue on water. Okay. So I always try to find an EOW because if you look at all of our major airports, they're all over water. So with that said, I always pay to the I always read the manual out of respect for the flight crew because that's just what you should do. I mean, they're hardworking men, they're hardworking mothers, they're hardworking people. It's a very, very challenging job to be away from your home. So I have always respected them. And I ignored everything they said. Everything. Everything. I mean, it went in one ear and I did my own thing. But the two flight attendants, which they've changed on an Airbus 320, they were in the front in the galley. And they both said in unison, literally, heads down, stay down, heads down, stay down, heads down, stay down. And they said it in unison. And every time they said it, their voices escalated. However, they never lost their composure ever. They did not know we landed in water. And Captain Sullenberger came out and he said, This is your captain brace for impact. That was the only communication we had.

SPEAKER_01 16:48

So wait, excuse me. He actually came out of the cockpit and was standing. This is well, he said it right before we went into the water. But he was standing in front of everybody. He wasn't sitting in the cockpit.

SPEAKER_00 16:59

He was in the cockpit when he said that, but he came out immediately after. Okay. And they had opened up some of the slides, some of them were unoperable in the back of the aircraft. I was in the front, and all I remember is people just running and shoving. And I remember saying to my seat mate, whatever happened to women and children, I didn't say it out of meanness. I said it out of that's my personality. When you're in a trauma situation, you really want to make sure your mental aptitude is okay. You want to make sure that you're processing what's going on. Because let me tell you, the process is not an easy thing to do. I can't imagine. So when he came out, everybody was running and running and running. And my seatmate said, Denise, let's go. And I said, Why? And he looked at me and he said, Well, I'm no angel and we're not in heaven. And I thought, well, how dare you? I was so much, I was extremely peaceful. I knew in my heart I thought I was gonna die. I was prepared for death, but I survived. Miraculously, I survived. So I went up to the port side of the aircraft and I had a little heavy hand help me. And I scurried down the deployed slide, which didn't deploy properly. It was upside down. So we hit the water.

SPEAKER_01 18:33

And then in turn, I put it So Did you have a life vest on? I mean, what what was the protocol while you were Did you have life? You know, they you talk about the E O E O E O W. So does that mean that you have your life vest on? Are you ready? Of course not. Okay, because you didn't listen to anything they were saying. I listened to everything they said. Okay. But did I do it? Okay. No, no. Did other people have life vests on?

SPEAKER_00 18:59

Yes. Okay. And some of them deployed them inside the aircraft, which is a no-no. Some people just took their seat cushions, but I was so confident in the fact that I could swim that it never crossed my mind. I left everything behind, literally. And a lot of people brought their personal belongings, big no-no. And my my seat mate kind of gave me the little push that I didn't need to have. And I went into the raft upside down. And the next thing I knew, there were so many people in our raft. I tried to get an idea of people in the water. Now, mind you, I had taken off my glasses because they recommend you take off your glasses in case the glass breaks and shatters or anything else. So I'm down there. It's I can't even explain the cold to you. It just there's no there's no there's no comparison. It's like going into your refrigerator and sitting there for 20, 30 minutes.

SPEAKER_02 19:54

I can imagine because I've been in a cold plunge for maybe 20 seconds. That's all I can handle.

SPEAKER_00 20:00

Do that times 20 minutes. Yeah. Yeah. It's exactly what it is. Much colder water. It's exactly what it is. And you freeze. You do. And I've done a cold plunge. So I saw people on, I saw I thought they were lemmings on the wings, and they started swimming, and they were swimming, and they were swimming towards Manhattan. And Mark and I were like, come this way, come this way. So they started swimming this way. And I pulled out one gentleman with Mark, and then another girl who I didn't believe that she had survived. I thought she was gone. Her skin was white, she was in bad, bad shape. Stephen was in bad, bad shape. We pulled them both out. I held him. He was, of course, we were all drenched. And he just looked at me, six foot five. And I held him in my arms. And I said, You're gonna be okay. He goes, Well, this is just a dream, isn't it? I said, No, but you'll be, and he was crying, a grown man crying. And he lived in New York. I mean, he grew up in New York. So that was very, very emotional. And of course, we didn't get a chance to exchange phone numbers, or hey, call me when you get, you know, get home. So uh the rescue was really intense, the emotions weren't there yet. I called my sister, the first and only time I had ever had two phones on me because we had a new policy January 1. This was January 15th. Back then we had blackberries, but I had my old reliable flip phone. We all had one. I said, just in case, you know, just in case. So I had it and I stowed it right here. Never done it before, first time and the last. It did get waterlogged, but I was able to send out a call to my sister. And my sister was at the ophthalmologist taking care of my 95 year old father at the time. And I called her and she hung up on me. I called her back and she had a few pleasantries. I'm at the ophthalmologist. My eyes are dilated. What do you want? I just got in a plane crash, Nancy. Well, she hung up on me. She thought I was pulling her leg. Well, my sister left. She went home. She called CNN. And the next thing I know is that my father's home was infiltrated by media. Now, mean needless to say, my father had no idea. Absolutely no idea that I was on the plane, no idea that we had crashed or water landing, however you want to call it. I look at it this way: I bought a ticket to go from point A to point B. I went from point A to the Hudson River. And I didn't get frequent flyer miles for that. I was very upset.

SPEAKER_01 22:50

At least double points, right?

SPEAKER_00 22:52

Or anything, just anything. So it was an amazing experience. And when they came to rescue us, I was rescued by the only female captain. She was amazing. She had that big old boat that comes over New York waterways, and they had the rope ladder. And if you ever come climbed a rope ladder, it's not easy. I've tried it at the gym, and it's very not sturdy at all.

SPEAKER_02 23:20

You have to have a serious core and strength to climb a ladder like that.

SPEAKER_00 23:25

And you have to have your hands have to be unfrozen, and I couldn't even hook my hands. So they were helping me get up the rope ladder, and it was not a pretty sight. Oh, I can't, yeah. And not at all. It was not a pretty sight. And I got up to the, I was the last boat that had been rescued. So we were in the cold, bitter whatever for 21 plus minutes. So I was in the actual raft. Sully and Jeff and several other people were in. So when the helicopters came in to pick up the people that didn't know how to swim, which was very, very, very, very frightening to watch that happen. And one of the gals that was not a swimmer when she was going down and they jumped, they started this huge airstream. And what does that do? It makes you colder. And then the fuselage was moving at a very fast clip, so you get little waves, and therefore you're even more cold. Plus, the plane was at this angle. I'm on the high side, but we didn't know if the plane was gonna go. Plus, the plane was completely ripped out in the back. I hope you go girls aren't flying today. We're not good. Um so once I got into once I got into the boat, I always call it a plane. I always get the two confused now, and they took us to all these different triage centers. I went to New Jersey, it was a glass pavilion. Some people went to the New York Athletic Club, some people went here, some people went there. So there's really no contingency plan with the airline. And we've talked about it many, many times. And they say, Oh, yes, yes, yes, we had a con. Oh no, you didn't, because this doesn't happen. And it's okay, it's okay. We all we all lived.

SPEAKER_03 25:14

We all lived.

SPEAKER_00 25:15

So we went over to the triage center and I walked in, and the first thing they did was present me with a body tag. So when you're not quite there mentally, and you're not sure what has happened to you, you're not quite sure, and you don't have glasses, so you can't really see what this is. But then at the very last, it says deceased. I didn't like that. This doctor came over to me, she's from Cuba, and she left her hospital practice and came over for triage. She came up to me and she said, Are you okay? I said, Totally fine. Perfect, you know, I'm a girl, I'm fine. I'm strong, I'm an individual, I'm self-supportive, I've always been who I am. I'm very, very strong character, I have very strong beliefs, I'm empathetic. I'm gonna do whatever it takes to make somebody get out of the situation that they're in. So she goes, Are you sure? I said, Absolutely. She goes, take your pants off. I'm like, No. She goes, take your sweater off. I'm like, no. Well, they pulled a sheet up around me and I took off all my clothing because I was drenched. And of course, the paramedics were very handsome and they were all talking and chit-chatting. And the doctor, she was a female, and she said, What's wrong with your ankle? I said, Nothing. It's fine, absolutely fine. It was like this big. So they said, You have to go in a gurney. I said, No, I'm no, no, no, I'm I'm fine. Go help other people. I'm fine. So I ended up going to the hospital after, you know, I was there for several hours, and just one thing after another, after another, after another. And when they were transporting me from New Jersey, and this is the best part because you'll appreciate this. I was right by Teterborough. And the first sales call that I had after my incident was Quest Diagnostics. Quest Diagnostics backs up to Teterborough. Yeah. That kind of gave me the heebie-jeebies. I went over and I stared at the airplanes for like three hours in the dead of winter to see if that Airbus 320 would have been able to land, which it would not have been able to land. And when I went to the hospital and they took me, and I didn't want to go, I said, no, no, I'm fine, I'm totally fine. There were people running down the street, and if you can remember all the media attention, and this girl, her name was Sarah Clampett, and she had these bright rosy cheeks and a camel hair coat and a scarf and a hat. It was cold. And she said to me, Matt Lauer wants to see you tomorrow morning on the today show. This is before he was a bad boy. And I said, Matt Lauer, he's my boyfriend. I love him. I'll be there. What time? I wasn't thinking straight. So I went to the hospital and they, you know, they fixed me up and they did my blood pressure and they put me in a warming suit. And I left there about 3:30, 4 o'clock in the morning. And it was very, very interesting. I had nowhere to go. I had no money. I had no ID. I had no medication. Not that I needed any. My biggest complaint was I had no lipstick. I was devastated. I had no lipstick. All I wanted was my lipstick and some moisturizer. And they did not provide that to me. So um I finally made it over to New York because the little girl, Sarah Clampett, sat in the lobby at Jersey City Medical Center until four o'clock in the morning and took me over to a hotel.

SPEAKER_01 28:53

And then did she work for NBC?

SPEAKER_00 28:55

She did. She was a producer. And it was 4 a.m. when I checked in. She goes, We'll pick you up at five to do the today's show. I'm a hot mess. Yeah, you have nothing. I'm a hot mess. No luggage, nothing. I'm a hot mess. Yeah. I'm as scary as if you've ever seen a human being. My hair is like wild. My face, my clothes. I'm hot. I'm wearing firemen's pants. That the waist was like a 49. I'm wearing um those rubber shoes that everybody wore for years. Oh, like a croc. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 29:30

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 29:31

That's what they gave me. They were size 20. Um, I had a shirt on that was like a maxi dress. I was really, really pretty. So I got into the hotel. I took a shower, as hot as hot can be, and they held the old they had the old radiator heater. So I put my wool sweater and my wool pants and my shoes. And you know how that smells that delicious wool smell. So I'd have something warm to wear to the show. So that was really the beginning of my adventure because I really didn't know anything and I hadn't been able to read because I didn't have any glasses, and the airline they kind of forgot about me a little bit. A little bit. And I was the top of the tier as far as chairman's preferred. And they had another program that was before that they eliminated right during the financial crisis. But that did, you know, I I don't hold grudges. I'm just not that way. I'm alive and I'm happy and I'm I'm but it would have been nice to have something. Well, they didn't even they didn't even bring my sister up there to get me. So it was it was a little they treated me a little different, but hey, you know, they didn't know what they were doing. And I get that. And I was very kind and compassionate and worked with a lot of the other people that were severely traumatized, and tried to really make sure that we communicated and I understood who didn't want to be involved and the people who wanted to be involved, and I gave them their privacy. It's a very, very, very traumatic thing.

SPEAKER_02 31:04

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 31:05

You're 3,200 feet in the air, and then you're not. And of course, I thought that we had gone completely underwater, and that was the end of us. Obviously, we didn't, so I'm here, but it was the most incredible experience of my life. Did they dress you at the today show when you got there? They did not, they did my hair makeup, okay, but I did wear my nicely smelly wool, beautiful. I bought it at Neiman Marcus, I think, years ago. And I had beautiful leather uh um wool pants, and that's a that's a that's something I tell anybody who flies. Always wear natural fibers when you fly. Always, always.

SPEAKER_02 31:49

That's good information. I've never thought about that.

SPEAKER_00 31:52

Always because they're not flammable, exactly. Exactly. So it's natural, natural, natural. And that was the first time I'd ever worn like a big sweater. I'd always worn a suit, which was another kind of crazy thing, but it was so, so, so cold. And when the reality started kicking in, and it took quite some time, took me two days to get home because I did become very lucky doing an incredible amount of interviews on NBC, CBS, Dateline, nightline, all the TV talks. It was a little bit crazy.

SPEAKER_01 32:30

What were the main questions people like what were the top questions that people asked?

SPEAKER_00 32:34

Oh, they just wanted to know how I was feeling emotionally, and you don't know. You really you don't know, you have absolutely no idea. And Vincent Lombardo, the captain from New York Waterways, he's like this, he's like this mafioso, and I love him to death. Hey Vinny, he's just like an incredible captain. He was on the Today Show with me, so we just really had uh just an incredible reunion when we finally met, and they were so dedicated to taking care of us. It was just absolutely amazing. But you don't know, you have absolutely I didn't sleep for a month. I couldn't take a shower with closing my eyes because they were time to close my eyes to wash my hair. It reminded me of the water, and there was just little things, and I had horrific nightmares, and I became very involved immediately. Why, how, who do I need to help? Let's keep this together. This is um this is gonna be a lifetime story. I was invited to the inauguration and I was on my way, and I was contacted by the NTSB, and they said you can't go. Why did they say that? Because Captain Sullenberger and Jeff Sciles were gonna be there, and the NTSB did not want any passengers and and him in the same room because they had not done his full interrogation yet. So that was a little, you know, I was looking forward to that because that would have been like my 15 minutes of fame. It would have been the most remarkable thing that had ever happened to me. Because I have the utmost respect for Captain Sollenberger and Jeff.

SPEAKER_03 34:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 34:13

And after that, I made a conscious decision that in order for me to give back, I'm gonna become very involved in aviation safety. I continued working. I never took a day off, I didn't take an hour off, I didn't take 15 minutes off. I just kept working, working, working. My team was number one in the world. I loved it. They canceled my trip to Amsterdam. Um, I really loved my job, loved it, loved it, loved it, and just kept working and working and working and working and working. And I noticed some people where I worked, they really didn't think it was that big of a deal. And I'm like, well, you know, kind of was a big deal. I was on company business, plane went down. There really wasn't anybody there from the company at all. Um, I had no money. I had to go to the bank. I had just opened a new account with Bank of America because I'd always been with another bank, but that's who the company paid us with. I walked there in the bitter cold on crutches with nothing with this outfit that they gave me, American Red Cross, and I had to beg them for $200. Begged them.

unknown 35:25

Good Lord.

SPEAKER_00 35:26

Begged them. I had a name band from the hospital, and they finally gave me the money. And I spent $197 at Dwayne Reed. Lipstick, toothpaste, shampoo, you know, the necessities. So and I I like I look back and I see the humor in it, and I look at it in a very, very positive way. And then I look at other people that were on the flight that are just so sad and will never fly again, and look at this as basically a stepping stone, but much more religious stepping stone. Where I didn't bring the religious pack, but I did pray. Believe you me, I prayed. Yeah, um, there was nothing, there was nothing more that I wanted other than to live my life doing what I love to do. And you know, that was basically, you know, that. And then, of course, everything that happened afterwards and my involvement with all my professional organization and being on the board of directors of a couple aviation safety groups. And if you want to hear about those, I well, I have one question.

SPEAKER_02 36:33

Please, how long was it before you flew again? I had to fly home. Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_00 36:39

And how how did that feel? That's probably one of my best stories. I did the Today show on Saturday morning with Lester Holt, and after that, they had different vehicles taking me to different airports, which was I thought was kind of weird. I was not accustomed to that. But you have this five seconds of celebrity, not that I was ever, but they have different cars, reporters and media following you, so we switched cars. And I thought, well, kind of cool, but so they took me to LaGuardia. I have nothing, literally nothing. I have a bag from Ann Taylor because somebody called in the show and bought me a new outfit. So I did have a little suit from Ann Taylor, which I still have, and I'll keep it till the day I die. And we did the Lester Holt, they took me there, and it was like a five-hour wait to get on my my plane. I hadn't eaten in two days. Because just not something, just wasn't something that you were thinking about. And when I got to LaGuardia, I went to the Admiral's Club, U.S. Airways club, pardon me. And there was a couple there, and they owned a company in South Carolina, a paper manufacturing company. I'm in the paper industry, always have been my entire life. I worked for Mead Corporation, then I worked for International Paper, and then the other company that I were Corpacks, we were based in Amsterdam, and then the company that bought us, which will remain nameless. Once I go back to Charlotte, and they obviously they had to break into my car, and breaking into a car is not the easiest thing today to do. And thank God I had an extra key there. So I drove home. I had no glasses, I had no money, I had like 50 cents in my glove compartment. I didn't have any house keys, but I would come in through my garage. So I drove her to Dina DeLuca's at Phillips place because I'm going to order everything that they have. So I did all these custom meals and I had a little basket. And this woman came up to me and she goes, I didn't recognize you. And I said, Oh, you didn't? She said, No, I didn't recognize you. You've got glasses on. I thought, who the heck is this woman? So when I got into my car, my glasses that I had in there, they were like 100 years old and they were like this. I couldn't even see out of them, but at least I could drive. And I got to the cash register with this basket and it was loaded, and including a bottle of champagne. Everything was custom made a salad, the sandwich, the yogurt, you name it. It was all ordered. And the girl said, That'll be X amount of dollars. And I said, I don't have any money. That's how my mind was working. So this couple from Domtar, the paper manufacturer, they said, We got ya. We got ya. We're taking care of you. And I'm like, What? They said, We saw you on today's show. So on and so forth. So they were wonderful. And the people in the club, I kind of overpassed this, they let me go. Her husband stayed behind, and he let me go in his seat to get home earlier. And of course, they were they were fantastic. It was absolutely fantastic. The the graciousness and the and the caring and the empathy from other people. And then I went home and I just kind of drove up to my place. And I have a little small porch. I live in a townhome, and you couldn't walk, you couldn't walk on my porch. There was not one step available. There were champagne, flowers, food, you name it. My neighbor's an FBI agent. She put a bullet there, here to get that. You deserve it. And then everything started happening. Then the reality and the sheer anxiety of what happened and how do you how do you move forward? I was in the prime of my career. And you want to make sure you do all the right things. So I just went right back to work. So I to answer your question after that trip home, I flew to Boston 10 days later because I had to get my IDs. I went to the airport four hours before my flight. And I stood, it was off, it was on the C terminal at the very, very end, and I stood behind where the ticket agents were because I was so anxious. I boarded the plane, quiet, and just sat there, meditated, and and did what I had to do in order to take off. And it was very, very trying.

SPEAKER_01 41:28

I feel like we could have like two more hours and yeah, we have to have a follow-up. We're gonna have to have a follow-up because I mean this is just so remarkable. But what I I really love the most is that your positivity about humanity and the way that you can still um share stories about that really horrific guy and and yet still have such a positive outlook and the people were kind to you. And I think that the moral of the story is that people do want to be kind, even at the darkest moment. And you were saying that on the plane that you wanted to be helpful. So I think just in closing, what kind of message could you give our listeners and our viewers about how to have grace and compassion during a really traumatizing time?

SPEAKER_00 42:20

Well, first and foremost, you have to be respectful. Um, if you're in a situation, if you're a concert, Super Bowl game, basketball game, any sporting event. You saw a great, great event yesterday or day before. Excuse me. You have to lower, you've got to lower that negativity. You've got to present yourself as positive and you've got to present yourself as being fair and giving every person the equality that they deserve. We're not all the same. We all come from different backgrounds, but in reality, we are all the same. And I'm a huge proponent of women supporting women. I'm the only female today that does safety with aviation. I'm working with FAA right now on an ACT ARC reauthorization. So I basically answer your question, Marnie, is be kind. And if something bothers you, bring it to light. There's ways of saying things. You can say them in a thoughtful, pleasant manner. And if the person doesn't want to hear it, all they have to say, I don't, I really, you know, I appreciate your opinion, but I already think I figured this out. I think we're at a stage in our lives that our lives are very important. And right now you live your life to the very, very, very fullest. I do the same, but my life was cut short. It was cut short career wise, which is still an issue. But I compensate that by doing my two volunteer groups and being on the board, which is what I love. I love giving back because there's nothing greater. There's no better, there's no better feeling when you do something to help or you mentor somebody. I'm mentoring three people right now and they're all young, all college grads, just trying to figure out what they're doing and how they're doing it. So once again I say just be yourself and be kind and don't be phony. Just give them just try to make it feel as though they're welcome no matter what background, what their beliefs are, we all have different beliefs. I'm not going to like you because you don't like chocolate ice cream. I may not understand that but why would you why would you choose to be ugly to a person or be ugly to anybody and especially when you're flying in a metal tube when I go into an airplane you can't get any nicer than me ever I'm sure ever.

SPEAKER_01 45:05

Well whoever gets to sit next to you is very fortunate for many reasons.

SPEAKER_00 45:10

Hopefully you still keep in touch with Mark Hood. I I take he's my seat mate I take I we talk all the time. He lives down in Greenville now. Good. And he we're very different but we get along very well he's I love him. I love his family. I went to both of his children's wedding he has adult well yeah they're adults now they they're twins and they both got married and went to the weddings I go to New York every January for oh boy um our reunions I just went in January it was fantastic and I do all the train I do all the not to train I do all the prep work when when you have 150 people we've lost three unfortunately and then again there's people that want nothing to do with us so we have to be very very sensitive to their desires because if they don't want to live this life and if you know anything about PTSD it's not something that you go to the doctor for a half an hour and they say oh you've got PTSD I saw a psychiatrist and a psychologist for seven years.

SPEAKER_03 46:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 46:15

And the day they told me that I had PTSD I told them they were wrong and I was going to fight it. So that's what I did.

SPEAKER_01 46:24

Well good for you. Well we're glad you're here to tell the story and to keep it going. Yeah and we're gonna need you back soon so that you can go into part two of uh of so many great things that you've done and thank you for being here and sharing that it was riveting on the edge of my seat. But I also know the outcome so that was good. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 46:45

Yeah it makes a difference when you know the outcome sometimes now when I meet young people well what year were you born? And if you have I don't do you have adult children or young yeah I mean semi I mean young adult children yes because if you ever want to come to the museum I would love to yes definitely you'll be my guest okay thank you all right because it is it is fascinating.

SPEAKER_01 47:08

We'll do a live we can do a location a bench to bold at the museum they would love that and I can I can get all that taken care of for care of it.

SPEAKER_00 47:15

Yeah we would love it. Thank you. Thank you everyone thank you thank you for being on bench to bold thank you I think it's a great great concept thank you