This revives a strange memory for me.
I had a good friend back then, Duke Baugher, who I had recently introduced to aviation. He went all in, and decided to get his commercial pilot’s license and become an airline pilot. This entailed accumulating a lot of air hours, so he would fly anything, anywhere to further his quest. He called me late one night from Greenville, SC airport, as he sometimes checked in randomly. He said, “You’re not going to believe this.I just walked around the tour plane for Lynyrd Skynyrd while they were refueling my plane! It’s parked right next to me on the ramp!”
We agreed that it was about the coolest thing in the world, talked some more, and said goodbye. I drifted off to sleep with WMMR-FM on my radio in the Philly suburbs. Good to hear from my buddy!
I awoke to a loud version of Free Bird playing on the radio in the wee hours, with the DJ sadly announcing the fatal crash of that same plane just hours after my buddy had called me about it. How sad and weird was that? I remember it like it was last week.
Some things are etched in our memory, and I can understand why that would be. Imagine your friend on that memory.