reach out to these kids, and it can be an emotional burden for her.
Given how deeply she feels things, she is sensitive to words that sting. She doesn’t engage in the sometimes rough dialogue that is normal for teenagers. She takes greater care with her words. She will couch even something negative in gentler terms. She doesn’t want to hurt people’s feelings.
I remember when she would get home from school in third or fourth grade, and Lorrie and I would ask her, “So how was your day?”
Invariably, she’d tell us about a schoolmate who was having a tough day at school. She could sense when someone else was troubled. She felt this need to reach out to them. I know that can be an emotional burden for her.
From day one after Flight 1549, Kelly experienced the incident fully. The moment Lorrie told her what had happened, she started to cry, even though she already knew I was safe. Her feelings were partly rooted in the idea that my life had been at risk. But I also think she deeply felt what that experience must have been like for me, and her heart went out to me. Hearing the details was very disturbing to her.
Both Kelly and Kate saw their grades take a hit in the wake of Flight 1549, and Kate wasn’t able to get hers back up completely. At first, it was a stressful time for all of us. They missed school and then, as soon as they returned, took several exams that they weren’t prepared for. Once they were in that deep hole, it got hard to get their averages back up. Our routine was disrupted for weeks, and the “public figure” aspect of our new lives— always having to be “on” when we were in public—was hard for them.
In the wake of the flight, we’ve sat down together as a family to read through some of the stacks of mail we’ve received from around the world. It helped us process the event together, to see how other people connected with it emotionally. It reminded us to cherish the bonds between us, because nothing is ever for sure. I think the girls have a better understanding of this now.
As teenagers, Kate and Kelly are far less apt to snuggle with Lorrie and me than they once were. We miss that. Sometimes, when they’re not feeling well, it becomes OK to snuggle again. And in the wake of Flight 1549, we hug a bit more. I’m more apt to kiss the girls before I leave town, even if it is early in the morning and they’re in bed, sleeping.
A FEW weeks after Flight 1549, Lorrie wrote a letter of thanks to all the friends and strangers who had gotten in touch with her to express their concern. “It is still hard for me to sort out all my emotions,” she wrote. “The events of January 15 have been like an onion, multilayered, and peeling back the layers has taken time and will take more time to come. For me, there was the accident itself, the huge media interest, and then the mail.
“It’s interesting how our brains protect us from trauma, because after Sully told me the news, I didn’t feel panicked. I just felt this weird, out-of-body feeling that it was not real. I was going through the motions but I could not believe that the images I was seeing on TV were of my husband’s plane.
“I know intellectually and believe with all my heart that commercial aviation is the safest form of travel, so I have never been afraid of Sully’s career. How incredible were the odds that my husband was involved in an airline accident? Impossible, and yet not.”
Flight 1549 has had an impact on our marriage. The resulting emotions for both of us have been overwhelming and sometimes confusing, and we haven’t been able to sufficiently be there for each other at every step.
One morning, five months after the incident, Lorrie said to me, “I’ve wanted to cry all morning.” And so she went by herself to our favorite hill in the neighborhood—the “anything is possible” hill. She stood on top, took a moment that was all her own, and cried. Why was she crying?
“The accident, the aftermath, it’s still unbelievable to me,” she told me. “I feel like I haven’t been able to fully process it all.”
It isn’t just that Flight 1549 jolted her into the realization that she could lose me. “I’ve always known I could lose you,” she says. “Like all of us, you’re at the mercy of those driving next to you on the highway, or the food you’re eating in a restaurant, or a disease we don’t yet know about. So it’s not that I feel like you’re cheating death every time you fly.”
Instead, Lorrie just feels as if the incident in the Hudson, and the continuing aftermath, has scrambled her brain. It affected the dynamics in our family.
For our entire marriage, Lorrie spent long stretches as a single parent. I’d be off on trips, and she’d be dealing with everything in the household. It seemed like things always decided to break when I was gone—the car, the washing machine, the oven. Once, I was on a flight doing preparations before pushing back from the gate, and my cell phone rang. It was Lorrie in a panic. Water was pouring down the side window of our house. At first she thought it was a bad storm, but then she realized that the seal on our pool pump had broken, and water was gushing into the air like an open fire hydrant.
“Oh my God!” Lorrie said. “The pool is broken! A quarter of the water that was in it has drained out already, and hundreds of gallons are raining down on our window!”
“I’m about to push back,” I said to her, which meant I was required to turn off my cell phone. “Turn off the filter pump and call the pool guy. I have to go. I’m sorry.” And then I shut off my cell phone, taxied toward the runway, and left her on her own to stop the rain.
No woman dealing with an emergency like that wants her husband hanging up on her. Again and again, my flying career came at a cost.
I’ve been even busier and more out-of-pocket since Flight 1549. I’ve been asked to make appearances, give testimony, answer requests from the media, and travel as a public face of the piloting profession. For the first seven months after the Hudson incident, I wasn’t even flying planes for US Airways. Still, some weeks, I’d be gone from home more than I used to be when I was in the cockpit.
“You won’t get a do-over with the girls,” Lorrie has been telling me. “If you wait until the next year or the year after that to live your family life, you’ll miss too much. The time you’ve lost is gone forever.”
I know this, and I’ve tried to make adjustments in my life.
A stressful incident such as Flight 1549 either pulls a couple closer together or leaves them further apart. Lorrie and I have seen both extremes. At first, we clung to each other like ports in a storm. There was an onslaught of attention, and we were hanging on to each other for dear life.
Now Lorrie sometimes gets frustrated with me when I’m “Sully, the public figure.” Almost everywhere I go, people recognize me and want to interact, get an autograph, or reflect on something from their own lives. I’m cordial and gracious to everyone, and genuinely interested in their stories. Sometimes, when I get home, I can be frazzled and used up and short-tempered. I can be impatient with the girls.
“You have your priorities wrong, Sully,” Lorrie has told me firmly. “As nice as you are to strangers, that’s the same nice you need to be to me and the girls.”
She is completely right about that, and I’m lucky to have a spouse who loves me enough to tell it to me straight.
AT ABOUT eight o’clock one morning, a few months after Flight 1549, Lorrie and I were in our garage, looking out into the street. Kate had just pulled out of the driveway, headed for school. It was a bright, beautiful morning, but inside the garage, we were standing in shadow. Lorrie and I were holding hands and watching her pull away.
Kate began her three-point turn to pull out of our court, and she stopped for a moment to shift from reverse into drive. As she turned her head, her ponytail was swaying, and she looked so grown up. She looked almost like a woman in her twenties. It was startling to us.
In that instant, I felt a cascade of images coming into my head, images of her growing up and becoming the strong, confident young lady she now is. It was almost as if she were driving away that morning on her way to her own adult life. Standing there, I remembered when we took her to her first day of preschool at St. Timothy’s Episcopal Church in Danville, and how a lot of the other kids were clinging and crying, and Kate just took off, happily independent. She said good-bye and never looked back.
In that moment, I also thought about an essay Kelly wrote in third grade. In the spring of 2002, US Airways had parked its MD-80 fleet and was retraining pilots on the Airbus. Until I got the Airbus training, I wasn’t flying, and I was able to remain home for a few months, very present in the kids’ lives. Kelly’s essay assignment, in the
