One plane crash survivor is looking back on the harrowing events of the 1985 Delta 191 plane crash. Richard Laver was only a 12 years old when he was on that plane with his father, tennis coach Ian Laver, who didn't survive the crash. In addition, 136 other passengers, crew members, and the driver of a vehicle struck by the plane were also killed in the horrific crash. In an interview with People reporter Susan Young, Richard details the day of events as he remembers them happening.
"I’m one of the few people in history that has ever been thrown from an exploding jumbo plane and lived. The Federal Aviation Administration called my survival impossible," he shared. "I was 12 years old and a top junior tennis player. My family was living in Delray, Florida, and my father was taking me to a junior tournament in San Diego. I had been having dreams two days prior of a plane crash. I told my mom, Kerry, 'It’s not only a bad feeling. I know it’s going to crash.'"
His mother told him that was a one in a million chance, and that it was never going to happen. "We were the last people to get on the plane that day. As we flew over Dallas, about halfway into the trip, I looked over to my right and saw a storm cell out the window, dark and foreboding. My father didn’t seem to be concerned: He was drinking a rum and coke and smoking a cigarette, laughing as he watched a cowboy film."
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"And then the world started to slow down. I felt that something could be wrong. I went to the bathroom and threw water on my face, and I looked in the mirror and I knew — right then — that the plane was going to crash. I knew it," he said. "My internal voice said, 'Don't put your seatbelt on.' I listened. And I put a blanket on my lap so the flight attendants wouldn’t see."
"What happened next made headlines around the country: The plane hit a wind shear as part of a microburst in the storm. It felt like an elevator dropping from the hundredth floor to the first. Mayhem erupted on the plane, and everyone was screaming. The plane never quite made it to the runway, instead hitting several water towers before being consumed by an explosion like a mushroom cloud. Everybody in my aisle died, as did almost everyone else on the plane."
"But I flew out through the explosion and landed in a nearby field, whipped by 70 mph winds. Golf-ball sized hail was hitting me. My face had been burned. I couldn't move or speak. I couldn’t yell for help. I later learned that I was ejected from the plane at almost 300 mph — 50 yards through the air," Richard told People.
He went on to describe being rescued and helicoptered to a burn unit. "I remember at one point my mother coming in and I said, 'How about that one in a million chance?' And she said, 'We’re going to know what your purpose for your life is one day.'"
Over the years, Richard expressed having a hard time healing from the trauma of the crash. "By the time I was 27 years old, I had given up and I really didn't have a lot of hope. I just wanted it to end. It felt as though nothing had really worked in my life. I didn’t have money to pay my rent. I had no car. I could have called people, but I needed to do surgery on my soul first."
He went on to describe meeting his wife and having a child together, but then having to support his daughter through sickness. He went on to start a formula company, Kate Farms, as well as an energy drink company, Lucky Energy.
"Katie had suffered a stroke in utero. What ended up happening was I was a happy father with a daughter with cerebral palsy. There was one more challenge: She kept losing weight. I knew if I lost Katie, that was the final bullet. I was not going to make it. I knew by saving Kate, I would also be saving myself," he said. "My story is a guy survives a plane crash, saves his daughter’s life and it’s a wonderful life. But I wanted to tell a last story, about a guy who gets lucky. It’s not a beverage company to me. It tells the story about never giving up and believing in yourself."
