The Crash of United Flight 232
By Laurence Gonzales
July 18, 2017
On July 19, 1989, one of the most dramatic events in aviation unfolded in the skies over Iowa as heroic pilots battled to land a crippled DC-10.
There was a festive atmosphere in first class that day, July 19, 1989, on United Flight 232. Virginia Jane Murray, a thin, youthful, 34-year-old flight
attendant with bleached silver hair, stopped to talk with passengers Bill and Rose Marie Prato and Harlon "Gerry" Dobson and his wife, Joann, from
Pittsgrove Township, N.J. The ladies were dressed in muumuus, and their husbands wore Hawaiian shirts. They were laughing and enjoying the perfect
ending to their trip. "It was obvious they'd had a wonderful vacation," Murray said more than two decades later. "They were just very pleasant people.
I think about them all the time."
Read more: