It twinkled.
Cox could see tiny pieces of metal in the fluid, glittering in the lights. “Is this normal?” he asked another team member. The guy shrugged.
The question circulated through the group. Was it supposed to twinkle? Wasn’t hydraulic fluid supposed to be cleaner? Finally, someone from Parker piped up. The area was downstream of the metal parts, and it wasn’t unusual to get tiny particles there. Still, no one knew how much twinkle was too much. They looked inside with a microscope and videotaped the tiny particles. Then they drained the fluid with a syringe and sent it to be tested.
The next day, they hooked the power control unit to a test bench that looked like a refrigerator turned on its side with dials and switches on the back. The bench acted like a hydraulic pump on an airplane, providing pressure to the unit. Some members of Phillips’s team believed the test could bring their first breakthrough. The valve-within-a-valve might be jammed, which would make its piston go hard to one side once hydraulic pressure was turned up. That would explain the crash.
Expectations for the test were so high that Phillips had invited Carl Vogt, the chairman of the safety board, to watch. Vogt and everyone in the systems group stood around, intently watching the piston. A technician drained the last of the fluid from the unit and collected it in a clean container so they could send it to Monsanto, the manufacturer. They installed a special cover on the unit so they could watch how the valve and the levers inside reacted. They would be able to see if it went haywire.
A technician flipped a switch and started the purple hydraulic fluid flowing at 360 pounds per square inch, about one-tenth the normal pressure. The bench vibrated with a steady hum of the pump. No one spoke. Everyone was listening for a hiss or gurgle or belch or some other strange sound that the valve might have made before it threw 132 people to a horrible death. It seemed as though everyone in the room was holding his breath, waiting for the big moment. Everyone craned to see the valve, watching for a jam or a sudden movement.
Nothing.
The piston just sat there. The valve didn’t budge. They might just as well be staring at a rock garden.
A technician moved a lever to simulate the pilots’ stepping on the rudder pedals, and the slides inside the valve went back and forth smoothly. The scribe wrote, “Servo valve acted normally.” They turned up the pressure to a full 3,000 pounds per square inch, the normal pressure on a 737.
Still nothing.
A technician stood beside the power unit and pushed and pulled the lever harder and harder. He tried to get it to reverse, slamming it as hard as possible. “No piston reversal,” the scribe wrote. The technician tried slamming it to the left. “No piston reversal.” Then the group tested the yaw damper, an electrical device that made tiny adjustments to the rudder. “Passed. Passed. Passed. Passed. Passed. Passed. Passed. Passed. Passed.”
The technicians removed the unique valve-within-a-valve and put it through a battery of tests. They probed it, flushed it, shined a light through it.
“Passed. Passed. Passed. No abnormalities found. No abnormalities. No anomalies. No anomalies. Normal wear pattern. No anomalies.”
The power control unit was fine. The scribe ended the notes with a summary:
“The unit is capable of performing its intended functions as specified by Boeing…. Testing validated that the unit was incapable of uncommanded rudder reversal.”
Phillips signed his name at the bottom of the page.
10. “WANNA PIECE OF THE PLANE?”
On a clear autumn day, Joan’s friends and family came to the Saint Michael Catholic Church in Wheaton, Illinois. They lined up to sign the guest book beneath a photograph of Joan in her wedding dress. At the altar was another Joan photo, surrounded by candles and hundreds of flowers—carnations, dark red roses, and baby’s breath. There was no casket. It was eight days after the crash and Joan’s remains had not been identified.
Brett hugged people as they arrived. A few days earlier, he was worrying about mundane things like floor tile and getting to work on time. Now he had to deliver a eulogy for the woman he loved.
The priest who had counseled Brett and Joan before their marriage thanked everyone for coming and said that their presence in the church was a testament to the richness of Joan’s life. “Death is not something to be explained,” he said. “It is quite beyond our understanding.”
Friends and relatives walked up for Holy Communion, knelt at the altar, and solemnly dipped pieces of bread into the wine. When Communion was over, Brett stood up and slowly walked to the podium, brushing his short auburn hair back from his forehead.
“When this occurred,” he said tentatively, “it left me with a terrible, empty feeling inside. Going to Pittsburgh put this in perspective. There were one hundred thirty-two victims on that plane. Imagine all of us here tonight, multiplied by one hundred thirty-two, and you begin to get some scope of this plane crash. I would just like to offer my blessings for all of them as well, and all of the other people that are suffering through the same things.”
He got a faint smile as he described Joan.
“Many times my friends and I would be sitting around the house watching a football game and Joan would be with us. She actually would watch the games. I’d say, ‘Oh, no! Face mask!’ and she’d say, ‘Oh, no, that’s encroachment.’ She knew more about it than anybody I know. I always enjoyed going to work functions and parties with her. There would be an occasion or two where she would get up and speak. It was just remarkable to see the transformation from the woman I know that always played to my needs, to see her take on an executive’s demeanor almost instantly, standing up and delivering a nice speech.”
Brett said he had always been skeptical about religion and had never gone to church regularly, but he had been praying and watching for a sign from God that Joan had gone to heaven. He said he had received two since she died.
“I know I will get through this, as we all will, with difficulty and great pain,” he said. “There’s not much more I can say other than I loved her more than anything else in this world…. She’s gone forever.”
He paused. “I would just like to end with an Irish proverb that we both enjoyed:
May the road rise up to meet you
May the wind be always at your back
May the sun shine warm upon your face
May the rains fall softly on your fields
And until we meet again, may God hold you in the palm of His hand.
Three weeks after the crash, the Beaver County coroner still had not identified Joan’s remains. Don Moore, a USAir pilot working in the morgue, had talked with Brett several times and sent him photographs of engagement rings found on several hands, but Joan’s ring was not among them. Brett was in Melrose, Iowa, for another memorial service in honor of Joan when Moore called again. Brett was getting annoyed.
“Look,” he told Moore, “it’s got two triangular-shaped diamonds, two oval-shaped ones, and a marquise in the center. It’s very unique.” Moore promised to call back.
The phone rang again a few minutes later.
“Did she have a very thin, simple gold band for a wedding ring?” Moore asked.
“Yes.”
“Mr. Van Bortel, we’ve identified your wife.”
Joan’s belongings arrived a few days later in a zippered white pouch that said, “Joan Van Bortel, aka Lahart, Gilbert Funeral Home.” Inside were her checkbook, a phone bill, and some shattered credit cards. Her wedding and engagement rings were also included, although the engagement ring was missing a diamond. Brett hoped he could find the diamond at the crash site.