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TWA Flight 847 hijacked
and they nearly canceled our trip!
June 14, 1985
Corey Hart's "Boy in the Box" released that same day. I'm glad it wasn't me.
"someone stole the stage..." That's the line from Jefferson Starship's video We Built This City. With the video's "Air Line Diner" graphic you see above, it became convincing to me that the band is referring to the hijacking of TWA847, which occurred six weeks before the video is released. My Grandpa, aka Alexei Romanov (read that HOME tab), was glued to the TV set as the hostage crisis played out in June of 1985. I was in New York, hoping that my June 16 departure to Athens would not be canceled. Eventually, Lindsay Wagner came to play the flight attendant Uli Derickson in the made for TV movie of the two week ordeal. The hijacking nearly canceled my month long CLUB EUROPA trip into Athens Greece, but the Tower Air pilot announced on his PA that the cancellation of U.S. flights to Athens came in just minutes after we were in the air, and we would land in Athens as scheduled.
A note for other IPL finds later at this LAYORLIAR website: We Built This City opens with a three dimensional version of Van Gough's Starry Night (and CRACKING THE DA VINCI CODE author Simon Cox would call that a religious painting). Also in We Built This City is a Buckminster Fuller dome, later nicked by Stephen King, who I suspect has it prior to Fuller's 1961 productions.
Last year, World Wrestling Federation's John Cena was on Kathy Lee and Hoda and demonstrated his hand 'dance' "You can't see me!!" As something a background film actor might want to yell to the director, I thought the hand signal was hysterical. It's also done in a movie from 1971. But read the caption below, and check it out how the hand 'dance' is done in the video below. Cheap Trick.
Three years before the hijacking of TWA847 was the release of She's Tight, by Cheap Trick. Bun E. Carlos, the drummer, is featured in this popular top-of-the-charts 1982 video posted here. Bun's brother, Kurt Carlson, was among the TWA847 passengers that were hijacked out of Athens on June 14, 1985. One American Must Die was the title of Kurt's book, which was based on the repeated shouts of a hijacker that ran up and down the aisle of TWA's 747 taunting the passengers. I probably would have titled my book "Pull down the shades... ," which is a lyric at 2:46 in She's Tight. Notice also that the guitarist is wearing a b/w striped outfit like Alexei Romanov in the HOME tab icon photo. The video even holds a bit of 'ThinThread,' done in neon pink light. Thin Thread is at a tab at the very bottom of this page, and is a published NSA project.
And who was 'tight' with the hijackers at the Athens Airport? Everyone who worked at the Athens Airport was suspect in the conspiracy that gained hijackers access to the 727-200, including the TWA847 flight crew. President Reagan blamed Athens airport security, and after two days, he closed the airport to all U.S. air carriers. In the photo above, Uli Derickson makes fun of the shroud of suspicions that sometimes come with commercial aviation incidents, and also of stewardess Vesna Vulvic, who survived a fall from a Yugoslavian commercial airliner as it was flying over mountains in Czechoslovakia.
Here's that story: Vesna was found by Bruno Honke (anagram: "UH... KEN O. BORN."), a woodsman who heard her screams in the dark as parts of the fuselage were falling around them.* Urban legend had it that Vesna was sucked out of the aircraft after a bomb exploded and fell on the side of a snow covered mountain, and slid to a safe stop. According to Wikipedia, she was trapped inside the fuselage by a food cart after the explosion. Wikipedia states that "When the cabin depressurized, the passengers and other flight crew were blown out of the aircraft and fell to their deaths." Vesna was the only survivor. This happened January 26, 1972, but it was not until 1985 that Vesna made the Guinness World Records book for surviving the highest fall without a parachute. Vesna's story was recreated for the American tv show titled MythBreakers. Vesna declined an interviews on Oprah, and also the BBC. Strangely enough, Vesna's crash happened one month after teenager Juliane Koepchke became the sole survivor of a plane that "was struck by lightning during a severe thunderstorm and broke-up in mid-air, disintegrating 3.2 kilometres (2.0 mi) above the ground." Juliane's 2011 book is titled When I Fell from the Sky.
* https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-38427411
The Sherman Hotel was still at the corner of 8th and 47th in New York it closed just a couple of years ago with a $35/night rate. The 1985 rate was $18/night, and I was here when I learned that the hijacking of TWA847 may cancel my flight to Athens.
Me on 6-14-1985. Click photo above for hijacking details. Reagan threatens to close Athens airport to all U.S. carriers.
A helicopter tour of New York City was on my agenda. The Statue of Liberty was covered in scaffolds. And yes, this is a New York subway car in 1985. They're nonexistent in this condition when I return to New York in 1995. Charles Bronson's DEATH WISH 3, also 1985, features one. In 1985, I returned to my room at the Sherman every evening to watch the news about the hijacked airliner, TWA847.
Fortunately, Club Europa K616 and the others with our chartered flight was allowed to leave New York. We boarded Tower Air on 6-16 and were in the air for about 5 minutes when the captain came on the PA and announced that the Athens airport was closed to U.S. carriers due to the hijacking, but we were in transit, and would land as scheduled. Here's our 747 in Greece. This may be the same plane that was used in Ray Liotta's film TURBULENCE. A great Christmas film!!
I didn't know until circa 2001 that two books had been written about TWA 847. I have an inventory here. Both books were entertaining reads. In 2016, a third book titled Dirty Work was written by Richard Vaux, The movie about the incident stars Lindsey Wagner as Uli Derickson. Click above to spend one and a half hours reliving a few days in 1985 with The Taking of Flight 847: The Uli Derickson Story.
We spent five days at a Club Med in Aegion Greece. Click above to see our part in the made for TV movie titled The Taking of Flight 847: The Uli Derickson Story. LOL.
That's me on the left. The hostages are still on Flight 847 when this photo was taken. Click to see my part in the film The Taking of Flight 847. To the right is a scene in the last 5 minutes of the film. Click for more...
YIKES! One of my rolls of film from my travels was lost by Fotomat. This old cover of Josie's comic book predates a story that starts and stops in Jenkinsburg GA (Josie lives in Riverdale too). The old yellowed newspaper icon to that story is at the bottom of this page.
We had even more fun than this in June/ July 1985. Click above right to see Joanie's look-a-like perform in Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star.
There were 19 hostages released in exchange for fuel the same day that the hijacking took place. My family knew that I was still in New York when this happened. They recognized Grandma Florence Davis (pictured here with my Aunt Eleanor, an Augusta GA Jr. High School nurse) on TV as being among the hostages released.
There were 19 hostages released in exchange for fuel the same day that the hijacking took place. My family knew that I was still in New York when this happened. They recognized Grandma Florence Davis (pictured here with my Aunt Eleanor, an Augusta GA Jr. High School nurse) on TV as being among the hostages released.
The remaining hostages of TWA847 were released about a week before we returned to the States. Our last excursion before returning to Athens was a stopover on the island of Hydra, Greece. Trudy, the VP of International Student Exchange, above, lived on Hydra. Joan Collins also owned a home on Hydra, which was published in the National Enquirer shortly after we returned to the States. Walter Mondale and Wierd Al were rumored to be on the island of Hydra while we were there. Most transportation on Hydra is done using donkeys. Cars are not allowed. In Hydra and everywhere else in Greece, a gyro and a Pepsi were about $1.05.
One Step Cameras were not as popular in 1985. That was ten year old technology. I used a small disc camera that fit in the front dress shirt pocket. But there were some One Steps around, as you see in the pic above. I still have that sweater.
Fodors 1985 Travel Guide says that there are no nude beaches in Greece, but this proved to be untrue. 1985 was the first year that nude beaches were allowed in Greece. The Prime Minister was the popular Andreas Georgios Papandreou, but we were told he was not supported by the Greek Orthodox Church leaders, which is why he allowed the nude beaches to open in 1985. Paradise was the topless beach, and Super Paradise was the nude beach.
We arrived back in New York on July 5, and some of us spent a few days touring the city again. Here's Denise and Sylvie at a pizzeria. I took this photo and years later noticed that Clark Howard is sitting behind us! Click on the pic above to see Clark's tips on getting CHEAP PLANE TICKETS.
Two days after I left New York, Madonna made the news when nude photos from 1978 were purchased by Playboy. Andy Warhol painted I'M NOT ASHAMED, which was the cover of the New York Post.
And they made shower curtains of it. If you click the photo above, you're taken to another Warhol. This one is from the New York Mirror from June 4, 1962, which is the day that I was born. M/M Charles Shaw were friends of my parents who died when this Air France Flight 007 crashed.
As you see from this internet photo, Eugene Fodor saved a lot of his 1985. Notice too that he has two copies of Paradise Falls, by Don Robertson, and another one titled naked..?
It's December 1985 when this photo of me reading the TV Week (Alice in Wonderland) is taken. I've been planning the move to England since August. I have my updated passport from November, and my BUNAC work permit. The timing is good. I have 3 speeding tickets and will lose my license if there's a fourth. Worse case scenario is that I'll run out of money in a month (I had $1,600 in Savings). Best case scenario actually happened. I found work at the Cavendish Hotel near Picadilly Circus, and saved enough money to backpack across Europe. In West Germany, after crossing Check Point Charlie, I went to an Easter Block grocery store. An interesting experience that I won't go into here, but I was reminded of it all when watching these two kids and the shopping cart in this Sly Fox music video which was released the day before my People Express jet left Atlanta. $299 one way.
It was approaching the 35th anniversary date of the hijacking when THE GLOBE ran this WORD SEARCH puzzle.
And here's a 1985 Campbell's commercial with advice from the sheriff.
And GO ALL THE WAY is what I did, when defecting to the East doesn't count. The photo of the Berlin Wall above is mine, from 1986. The magazine photo is from a U.S. News and World Report magazine that I found in a thrift store circa 2005. Yes. That's the same graffiti bird.
Navigate
to "Butts plane crash" icon, for a story about a lost roll of film from Athens, 1985, plus a new 1985 episode of The Twilight Zone, or go back to the HOME page. I have not made it easy to get to the Butts plane crash. If you wish to return to it later, you will have to remember that the entrance icon is at the bottom of the TWA847 tab, which is where you are right now. You may find that the TIMELINE page is a better way for you to navigate.
So ya wanna to to spy school... Click above to see how I discovered the National Security Agency's ThinThread.
Click the icon above to return to the TIMELINE.
This video by Sly Fox was released the same day in December that I left for London.
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