Late-morning we arrived at the Kittinger’s. “Al,” as he likes to be called, is no longer in air traffic control and hasn’t been for years. After losing his job with all the traffic controllers who were fired with the strike, he became a fisherman in the Bahamas. He now teaches Taekwondo. Twenty two years after the incident to which he was witness, I finally found him and spoke to him about it. I sent him a copy of the report, and Sarah called him from London to arrange the interview.
  Despite being nervous over it, he did great. As always, those who are the most nervous do the best!

Setting up at Al and Carol’s.  Al is saying something to me while I snap the shot. If Sarah, our Production Manager, worked at a carnival she would be juggling cell phones. She was always busy keeping us on schedule, in the right direction, and keeping everybody happy. Martin arranges the background lighting, and our sound engineer Robbie (crouching on the floor), is checking his equipment.

We’re coming close to filming. Sarah rushes in to do some last minute grooming.

Al is going over the NTSB accident summary of the events that night. Bruce gives the usual pre-shoot advice and instructions: remember my voice will be cut out of the final footage, so always put part of the question in your answer; be relaxed; don’t look around too much; don’t look at the camera.

We’re almost ready. Bruce studies the monitor to see what Al will look like. Sebastian, our Director of Photography, is ready with the camera. He announces “Speed . . .4  . . . 3 . . .2 . . .”  the questions begin.

A tape change usually happens at the moment when the interviewee is saying something really good. Sebastian prepares to load the next tape as Martin marks the used tape and prepares it for storage. Bruce chats on.

Al & Carol treated us to a lunch afterwards while the crew cleaned up. Sarah is calling Don Poole, our next stop.

Welcome to Florida! Don Poole, now 85, lives in a nice house on a retirement villa. Ducks aren’t a problem, but please, please don’t feed . . .yes, that’s right.

Chatting outside afterward. Sebastian is checking the Zapruder. Sarah is on the phone again. Bruce looks on.

Pilot, Jim Clevenger, and his co-pilot start to bed the Avenger down.

The service did not start until 2 p.m., so from 9 am to lunch we got the interviews out of the way. Mine was first. We used Alan’s office at the old Link Training Building, the last building of the NAS still standing aside from the old guard hut.

David White gets ready. He’s also been on Discovery a number of times as well and is a frequent guest speaker at the Memorial Service.

  Alan was next (but I have no pics of it.) Then I had to rush off with him and find David White. Dave was a senior flight instructor at the time and also one of the search pilots. I had spoken to him a number of times for my History Channel piece and for my research of the search for the planes and on the capabilities of the Avenger. He very articulate and quite nice, and  always very helpful on the Avenger. He lives in Michigan now, but confesses he’s a “snowbird. Every winter he heads down to Florida to spend time with his son, J. Brad White.  

The days rushed on. Bands and honor guards were arriving one after another.

NROTC practicing by the Memorial.

It was the coldest and worst day Florida had had in a long time. Rain forced us to move the entire service inside— inside the bay of the fire department. With a backdrop of firemen’s lockers, the nature of the service lost some of its meaning.

After the ceremony Bill & Rita Smith went to the memorial again to pay their final farewell to George Francis Devlin. Rita later found Weldon Richman for me, Bill’s old radioman. Weldon and I had a good conversation on George and he is sending me some home photos of his visit to Weldon’s home in Utah when they were transshipping across the country to their next base.   

A major amount of filming began after the service was long over and the crowds gone. The introduction to my piece is done with me walking around the Avenger. I’m told I’ll appear throughout since I was interviewed on many topics, but mostly I’ll be associated with Flight 19.

Bruce gets his cue and is at it again. He is doing his PTC introducing Flight 19. Sebastian is in the foreground.

What am I saying?

Back at the memorial. Matt is checking his Zapruder while Bruce waits on his spot. The two honor guards, A.J. Severillo and Richard Combs loosen their legs during a break between several takes.

Back at the tarmac. Another introduction PTC is done before the Avenger as it turns over its engine. Bruce discusses it here with Seb and Robbie.

Bruce listens to the take. Seb is at the camera, Martin is at left. Sarah has her back to me; Matt and Robbie can be seen in the background.

Later. . . retiring to the conference room of the Jet Center with Walt Houghton. I got up to snap this while we took a break. Walt is assistant to the Director of Aviation for Broward County, and designer of the memorial on the airport, plus a member of the NASFTL historical society. I had talked to Walt for my last show for the History Channel. It was a pleasure to finally meet him. Aircraft buffs and enthusiasts usually know of each other somehow. Walt also knows Rhonda Kimbrough who appeared with me on my History Channel segment and who also excavated a P-40 from a Florida swamp in 1989.

Walt is barely visible, surrounded by all the paraphernalia required for indoor filming.

The long hurricane tank is behind Dr. Grabber. Seb lit it blue by use of filters over the standard stage lights. The tank was turned on producing beautiful waves and splashing drops on the tank behind him as the sound of a building storm began. At the bottom of the picture, you can see Matt’s hand rocking a regular fish tank with aluminum foil in it and a light below. This created the clear wavy reflections of ocean swells on Hans’ face while the background water remained a Technicolor blue.