Agree 100%:toast: Here is a nic stor that puts this in perspective.
Everything to nothing in seconds
UNION-TRIBUNE
December 10, 2008
<!-- BODYTEXT -->Given the times, the news, the sinking, sinking economy, it sometimes feels as if the sky itself is falling.
But then something else falls.
And it puts life in a whole different perspective.
I can't even imagine the pain a young husband and father named Don Yoon is going through this day.
Just who could ever imagine this:
A fighter jet.
One engine out.
Then two.
A thundering crash, flames, and a big, ugly plume of smoke over a neighborhood.
Yoon looked every bit like a man who lost everything when he spoke yesterday of his wife and babies. His eyes were moist, his voice deadened.
Watching him, I realized that worrying about the health of a retirement fund can seem so trivial. Or a less-than-spectacular Christmas season. Or the auto bailout.
This is one of those tragedies that leaves all of us – a whole community – shaking our heads in wonderment over our thin grasp on life. Realizing that everything we hold dear can be gone in seconds.
Four people died – including an infant and toddler – when the jet fell from the sky Monday. They were Yoon's wife, Youngmi Lee, a nurse; their daughter Rachel, born Oct. 17; Grace, their 15-month-old daughter; and Seokim Kim, Lee's mother.
It's not so much the number of dead that shocks. Indeed, some terrible car accidents have taken more lives.
It was the randomness of it all.
How many surrounding houses stood empty that morning, after all? It was a work day, a school day. It was not a Saturday afternoon, when neighborhoods normally come to life, with children in the streets and parents rushing about.
But the fighter jet happened to hit the house where so much life – new life, too – was bubbling.
A house that a young Korean family had moved into only weeks ago because they had outgrown their apartment. The American dream, no?
I try to imagine what they were doing when the jet plane fell. The best I can do is think of my own home, my 3-year-old trying to put a puzzle together on the floor of our family room. And then I stop imagining because it's too much.
When all we knew of the crash was the immediate footage of fresh black smoke, I hoped that plane had hit a canyon, and the pilot had safely ejected, and the biggest story would be why the F/A-18D failed.
Now, the biggest story is about one man suddenly without his family.
How will he cope? How will he ever laugh or smile again? Yesterday evening, he looked so wounded that his pain seemed to creep into all our bones.
Don Yoon will have to continue to live and breathe, and that is one tough job as he heals – if he heals.
Yesterday, with his pastor standing next to him, he said his wife, daughters and mother-in-law are now under God's watch. He wondered if his father-in-law in Korea would ever forgive him. He said he harbors no anger against the pilot, who apparently tried every way he could to keep the jet from slamming into the neighborhood before safely ejecting.
Yoon called his wife “lovely.”
He spoke of his daughters. He broke down. He put his hands over his eyes. And he went on, speaking of how very special his family was.
In a cruel twist of irony, a fighter jet screamed in the background.
Life is indeed hard for many of us these days.
People are out of work.
They are hungry.
They are worried. But nobody's got anything on this man. Now and forever.
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This is dumb.
The amount of normal military aircraft flights outweigh performance sorties by about 99.9%. We have crashes and they happen during routine operations. Should we do away with all of those flights also?
How does a guy losing power in an F-18 and crashing lead to wanting to ban aerial demonstrations?
The amount of normal military aircraft flights outweigh performance sorties by about 99.9%. We have crashes and they happen during routine operations. Should we do away with all of those flights also?
How does a guy losing power in an F-18 and crashing lead to wanting to ban aerial demonstrations?
Airshows are for morons, same as drag racing, not the element that I would want to spend an afternoon with. About as exciting as watching paint dry. But that is besides the point, they are very dangerous ,senseless, and annoying with noise polluition. The deaths of MR Yoons family was unneccessary. Military should be playing with their toys over Pendleton or the ocean intsead of killing innocents. It wasnt the first F18 that ate shit in the area.
F-22 crashes in California desert nea
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<CITE class=caption>AFP/File – A US F-22 Raptor fighter flies during an aerial display in 2008. A US military F-22 fighter jet crashed … </CITE>
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<!-- end .related-media --><ABBR class=recenttimedate title=2009-03-25T12:56:14-0700>17 mins ago</ABBR>
<!-- end .byline -->EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. – One of the Air Force's top-of-the-line F-22 fighter jets crashed Wednesday in the high desert of Southern California. There was no immediate word on whether the pilot ejected.
- <A class="im ult-nofollow" href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090325/ap_on_re_us/f22_crash;_ylt=AmhHMGka3xF6xNJ610Fe1MVH2ocA;_ylu=X3oDMTBxcHNoMjQ5BHBvcwMzBHNlYwN0b29scy10b3AEc2xrA2lt"><ABBR title="Yahoo! Instant Messenger">IM</ABBR>
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<CITE class=caption>AFP/File – A US F-22 Raptor fighter flies during an aerial display in 2008. A US military F-22 fighter jet crashed … </CITE><!-- end #main-media --><!-- SpaceID=8903239 loc=FB noad --><SCRIPT language=javascript>if(window.yzq_d==null)window.yzq_d=new Object();window.yzq_d['rdQiVtj8fc0-']='&U=12a1ju936%2fN%3drdQiVtj8fc0-%2fC%3d-1%2fD%3dFB%2fB%3d-1%2fV%3d0';</SCRIPT><NOSCRIPT></NOSCRIPT>
<!-- end .primary-media -->
<!-- end .related-media --><ABBR class=recenttimedate title=2009-03-25T12:56:14-0700>17 mins ago</ABBR>
<!-- end .byline -->EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. – One of the Air Force's top-of-the-line F-22 fighter jets crashed Wednesday in the high desert of Southern California. There was no immediate word on whether the pilot ejected.
