The Monday After: Bill Blair survived an airliner crash

"William Blair remains on respirator, in critical condition."

Days after Blair, a "Canton attorney and fine arts enthusiast," was critically injured in the 1992 crash of USAir Flight 405 in New York City, that headline in The Canton Repository marked his progress in surviving the deadly air incident.

"William Blair III continues to recover in New York following a plane crash,” said the story that followed the headline on March 28, 1992, less than a week after Flight 405 went down at New York's LaGuardia Airport.

Another headline on April 3, 1992, reported he was taken off the "critical" list because he no longer needed the assistance of the respirator.

"Blair breaths on his own; is yet to speak," the headline said.

"The Hills & Dales resident still communicates with a lap computer ... not able to speak again until the throat soreness eases."

Blair died recently at age 81. But, more than three decades ago, he was one of 24 people who survived the crash of Flight 405, which killed 27 other passengers and crew members. He was blessed with almost 31 additional years of life that were filled with the practice of the law that he loved and the patronage of the arts that were his passion.

Those years also were plagued by an intense and understandable fear of flying by a man who continued his frequent flying despite his horrific experience.

Remembering the moment

A recent news obituary about Blair written by the Repository staff writer Robert Wang recalled the moment of the crash of USAir Flight 405, which on March 22, 1992, was bound for Cleveland from LaGuardia.

The small jet was carrying 47 passengers and four crew members.

"The plane stalled seconds after takeoff in snowy conditions. The airline failed to sufficiently de-ice the wings. The plane crashed into the runway, slid into nearby Flushing Bay and came apart," Wang wrote.

Blair "crawled out of the fuselage after the impact," Wang wrote.

"He ingested jet fuel and breathed in toxic smoke and suffered second-degree burns to his arms, legs and face."

Most of the injuries would heal, but the pain that he endured and the mental anguish that lingered eventually would lead to a judgment against USAir that paid Blair hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages.

A year after the crash of Flight 405, Blair told Repository staff writer Terry DeMio that "I think about it a lot, and I dream about it at night."

"His chest still hurts, where ribs were cracked. He breaths with some difficulty because of scarring in his lungs, burned from fuel and smoke he ingested," DeMio wrote in a story published in the Repository on March 23, 1993. "His fingers and hands are still numb, because of nerve damage where they were burned and cut."

A directed verdict issued about two years after the crash that said the airline was liable for compensation to survivors and families of victims satisfied Blair.

"I think it's a fair ruling," he said in an Associated Press story published in the Repository on Jan. 12, 1994. "I am happy."

Blair reported to be victim

It was two days after the crash when Blair, then 50 and a frequent air traveler both for business and his involvement in the arts, was reported to be a victim of Flight 405.

Repository staff writer Monica Davis reported in the newspaper that Blair was in critical condition at Elmhurst Hospital in Queens.

She quoted Blair's good friend Louis Eustathios of Canton concerning his condition.

"His vital signs are weak," Eustathios, calling Blair a "dear friend."

"We're very concerned. We hope he's strong-willed and able to come through this trauma."

Davis also quoted Sharon Reiter, who then was administrator of the Canton-based Citizens Committee for the Arts, of which Blair was president. Reiter said Blair inhaled smoke and ingested airplane fuel, as well as being burned.

"He's just a unique and wonderful person," Reiter said. "He's well-known and well-loved. If anybody can come out of this, it's Bill Blair."

Blair did survive – one of two dozen people to live through the crash of Flight 405 – and, according a 1992 article by David Adams of the Akron Beacon Journal's Columbus Bureau, the experience changed his outlook on life.

"As you go through life, you come into contact with so many lives, and we never think about what those contacts mean," Blair said less than two months after the crash in a talk at an Arts Advocacy Day luncheon, an event covered by Adams for an article published by the Beacon Journal on May 14, 1992. "Life is human contact. And for me, it's coming to the fore – where it should be – I've been telling friends and others how much they mean to me."

Blair recalled experience

In the talk Blair gave for the Arts Advocacy Day luncheon, he detailed his experience.

Icy snow fell, he said. Sitting in a window seat, with another passenger the distance of a vacant seat away from him, and being "bored and sleepy," Blair "kicked off his shoes and leaned against the side of the fuselage to take a nap." Quickly, he doze off.

He woke up to the sound of someone yelling that "the jet was going to crash," wrote Adams.

"I thought; 'This is it. I'm going to die now. ... I thought it was going to be my last moment on Earth,'" Blair recalled.

According to what Adams reported of the lunceon talk, "the plane began to cartwheel."

"Bright fire and dark smoke began to fill the cabin and icy water began to run across the floor. Several of the jet's passengers had already died. The man seated two seats away would later be found dead."

But, an inner voice told Blair, "No, you're not going to die here."

"His body burned and his lungs singed, Blair stepped out of the already open emergency exit, into the knee-high cold water, and away from the fractured and rapidly sinking fuselage," wrote Adams. "Blair believes he was one of the first to get out of the jet. Most of those who died were later found to have drowned, police said."

Blair's arm and leg were injured. His lungs, hands and face were burned. But, he lived.

In the aftermath

Survival came with a price.

"Plane-crash survivor William Blair shudders every time he climbs into an airplane, fearful that it will crash again," wrote Laura Meckler, then a Repository staff writer, in a story published by the newspaper on Sept. 9, 1994.

"Every time I'm on a flight I have this feeling," he told Meckler. "Until we stop at the gate, I'm terrified, terrified."

Blair's comments were being made following air travel of his own and in the wake of the crash of a Boeing 737 just outside Pittsburgh, a crash that occurred less than two hours after his plane landed at that city. All 131 passengers aboard that flight were killed, reported Meckler.

"I'm just, I'm just, I'm just absolutely devastated," Blair said, only minutes after hearing a report of the crash on television.

It made him relive his own experience in the crash of Flight 405, he told Meckler.

"I've just been sitting here screaming, 'Oh my God!' It's just absolutely terrible."

Meckler noted in her story that the trip he had taken about the time of the Boeing 737 crash was one he shared with Bill Twitty, then station manager for USAir at Akron-Canton Airport. That did little to relieve his anxiety.

"As we were landing, I said I just have a terrible time flying," Blair told Mecker. "I felt this plane would crash the entire time.

"I have a bad feeling about every flight I'm on. I know it's silly, but I just can't get over it."

Reach Gary at gary.brown.rep@gmail.com. On Twitter: @gbrownREP.

This article originally appeared on The Repository: The Monday After: Bill Blair survived an airliner crash