year after the investigation, the survivors organized a gathering.
They commissioned a pair of silver wings, engraved with the number 417.
Michael, then ten years old, presented them to Dad.
“He said something I’ve never forgotten,” Dad recalled. “He told me that because I’d carried him out of the plane, he wanted to carry the wings to me.”
Dad had kept them ever since.
Michael wrote letters for years.
Christmas cards. School reports. News about flight training.
Eventually, he became a professional pilot himself.
Dad even attended his graduation, although
