On Saturday, April 20th, a QF-4 Phantom II malfunctioned and "went down" at 12:20 p.m. (3:20 p.m. EDT) at the 2002 Mugu Air Show, a three-day event that began Friday at the Naval Base Ventura County. The two crew members aboard the plane died. One of the the crew was Marine Corps Captain Andrew Muhs. I'd known Andy since before I have memories. My parents have been friends with his parents since before I was born. Andy was five years older than I, just 31 years old. If ever there was a truly good person in this world, it was he.

One of the members of the crew ejected out of the plane before it crashed, but something went wrong and the ejection seat went straight down into the fiery mess. Obviously both the crew knew what was happening. How horrible to have that be the last few moments of your life. I cannot even imagine the terror.

I'm somewhat shocked by how hard I'm taking Andy's death. I haven't seen him in about four years, maybe more. I've been really close with his family more than I was with him. But he's been a part of my life forever. And it's been such a hard year. I've had a lot of WONDERFUL things happen this year, don't get me wrong, but gosh, just some awful terrible things have happened too. I can't even begin to comprehend how to approach this.

Obviously things move on, and things happen for a reason. I feel just terribly for Andy's family. When they return from California, I'll head over and try and comfort them in some way, if that's even possible, and I'm sure it's not. They don't live far from me at all, maybe fifteen minutes, and I haven't been to see them even once since I moved back to Silver Spring (almost a year now). Now's the time to change that, I think.

Andy will be sorely missed.

Ick.

Current Mood: sad