Carol Gordon of Fotomat was killed in a plane crash with my 1983 skydiving jumpmaster, Jeff. She was the Customer Service Agent that Miami Headquarters had assigned to find my lost roll of film from the June/July 1985 Greece trip. There were no nude photos on my vacation film, but the camera had been on the nude beaches of Greece. The yellowed article you see above has been taped behind my Skydiving Jump Certificate for years. Carol Gordon worked in the same office with Carol Johnson, and the two month long search for my lost roll of film ended on Monday, September 30, 1985 when I called and expressed my sympathies for the lost co-worker I had read about in the newspaper. I also asked if they found my film. Carol had been on vacation and was supposed to call me that Monday. I was told that my film was at their Atlanta office, and that I could pick it up tomorrow at the booth in Riverdale. The woman working the Fotomat booth in Riverdale was a temporary replacement for the employee at that had been fired for not logging in the film packages that he received at the booth. She was not able to answer questions about her deceased co-worker, Carol Gordon. Strangely enough, 12 years later I was employed by Delta Air Lines working with Dan Baum (the same name as the reporter here) managing maintenance contracts with Airborne Express.
Fotomat Customer Service Agent Carol Gordon among the deceased.
My April 1983 skydiving jumpmaster among the deceased.
The Fotomat booth still sits abandoned in Riverdale.
I jumped twice on April 27, 1983. I landed in a lake on the second cable jump that day. Like anyone who was personally associated with this crash, I remember every news broadcast that I saw even decades after the crash has occurred. Initially, sugar in the fuel line was the reason given. Later, it's an unidentified contaminate' in the fuel line. Not too many years ago, I was startled to locate official NTSB reports on-line. Old digital copies of the 9-30-1985 crash story continue to appear and disappear on the net. "This week has been an ordeal. All we've done is bury people," said pilot David Word, who also flew that day at West Wind Sport.
The day before the crash, 9-28-1985, the Atlanta paper published an article about Prince Andrew's new book titled Photographs.
Mom and Dad (yes, Bob and Carol) saved this comic section of the AJC for me. It's laminated in my scrapbook. I returned from Greece two weeks after these comics were published, and dropped my 15 rolls of disc camera film at Fotomat. I almost didn't make the trip, in that the chartered flight was nearly canceled due to the hijacking of TWA Flight 847 on June 14, 1985. Pardon the redundancy if you've already been to the TWA847 tab.
Kenny's Film - from Kenny the Shark
For some people, 1985 was a very good year. Bowling For Soup wrote the song, 1985.
For me, 1985 was the busiest year of my life that started with a three month Governor's College Internship program with the GA Department of Industy and Trade, then returning to Athens GA to graduate from UGA, then on to Washington DC to discover that I am spending a week with the CIA guy and his sister who I worked with in Athens, then on to NY for the Tower Air flight to Greece, then back to Riverdale GA to save enough money at Patton LeCraw Construction (double minimum wage) so that I can pay the $299 People Express airfare to get to London (with savings) before the year ends.
Less than three weeks after the crash in Butts Co. Ga., this episode of The Twilight Zone aired. In real life, Carol H. is my mom, and I'm Kenny H. In The Twilight Zone: Carol Shelton (anagram: "LETS CAROL H. ON.") is at the zoo to find the boy that the agency sent over. Kenny says yes, he's the one. Watch Little Boy Lost to see what happens with Carol's photos in The Twilight Zone.
On the film that Fotomat has lost were pictures from Washington D.C., N.Y., Greece trip. Click on an icon below to go to TWA847 tab or the Twilight Zone tab. Or scroll further down and click the TIMELINE icon to return.
Below is the list of victims. These days, Carl Zee is the traffic reporter in St. Petersburg FL. :
To the right (if you're on your computer), a scene from the 2016 film out of the UK that took on a double meaning. Still playing...
It's not really me on set with Starship at the left, but watch their video. The photo of me at the left was taken in D.C. in June 1985. We Built this City was released a few weeks later; on August 1.
The nude photos of Madonna are published in Playboy magazine the same month as the crash in Jenkinsburg.
This comic was one of several published in the September 1985 issue of Playboy Magazine.
In early September, most college student returned to campus, but not me. I had graduated in June. The story above is written by Hollis Wayne (anagram: "YA NEW HOLLIS.") and also from the Playboy September 1985 magazine.
Yes, this comic also is published in the Playboy September 1985 issue. The message in this comic is cryptic, and takes you back to the June 1985 issue of Playboy. It was all about metal art, and is in use at the PAB (that's greek: Rho Alpha Beta) page (created for my college collegues) here at LAYORLIAR. If you think it's "Brigham," you got it right. The anagram for Martini is "I'M IN ART."
Sly Fox will release Let's Go All the Way on December 28, 1985, which is the same day that I arrived in London.
The TIMELINE icon above will take you to travels before and after September 30, 1985.