Seventeen years ago, on July 19, 1989, they were aboard the ill-fated United Flight 232 from Denver to Chicago that crashed in a cornfield while attempting an emergency landing in Sioux City, Iowa. Today, they’ll be aboard a flight from Denver to Louisville for the 132nd running of the Kentucky Derby.
For Jody Roth, 31, of Fort Collins, Travis Roth, 26, of Laramie and their sister, Melissa Radcliffe, 29, of Denver, there have been hundreds of flights in between, but probably none more compelling.
It’s not just the horse race drawing them to Louisville, it’s the man who rescued two of them from that fiery crash when they were children traveling alone – Michael Matz, who now trains Barbaro, one of the Derby favorites.
Matz led the two younger Roth kids off the smoldering middle section of the DC-10 and then, with his fiancé (and now wife), D.D. Alexander, cared for the children until they were reunited with their parents.
When officials at Churchill Downs got word of the reunion planned Saturday, they offered the Roths a free trip to Louisville and a luxury box from which to cheer for their hero and his horse.
“It’s been hectic with all the calls, but our lives have been intertwined with Michael’s through the plane crash,” said Leslie Roth, the mother who put her three children on the plane to visit their grandmother in Albany, N.Y., 17 years ago then feared that they had perished.
A total of 111 people died in the crash. The Roth children – ages 14, 12 and 9 at the time – were among 185 survivors. “It’s very painful to talk about because the fear comes back,” said Leslie Roth, a middle-school teacher in Laramie. “For three hours we thought our children were dead because people just don’t live through big plane crashes like that. … It’s not something I would wish on anybody – you lose your children and then you get them back – but it makes you realize how precious the important things in life are, like having grandchildren.”
Leslie and Don Roth, the dean of the University of Wyoming’s graduate school, have four grandchildren, with Jody’s wife having delivered the fourth this week, putting Jody’s presence on Saturday momentarily in doubt. But he’s decided to go.
“All my buddies volunteered to take my place if I can’t go,” said Jody Roth. “I mean we’re talking crème de la crème, box seats that normally go for like $2,200 a seat. We’ve all got our new Kentucky Derby suits. I’m wearing a white-collared pink shirt and a blue blazer. We’re right below the twin towers, right below millionaire’s row, so we’re going to do the whole thing.”
Out of the wreckage
The oldest of the three Roth children, Jody freed himself from the wreckage and quickly tracked down his brother and sister as they were running with Matz away from the burning airplane.
“I was 14, and we’d already done a lot of traveling by ourselves, so I thought I could take care of myself and my brother and sister,” he said. “But the reality was that Michael let me feel proud while at the same time making sure we all knew he was going to be there until we were all safe and sound.”
Neither Matz nor the Roth children were originally scheduled on Flight 232.
Matz and Alexander were trying to get home to Pennsylvania after missing a connecting flight on a return from a working holiday in Hawaii. The Roth kids were bumped when their original flight was overbooked. Travis and Melissa were seated in the middle section next to Matz; Jody was several rows in front of them, sitting by a window.
Over Iowa, the rear engine of the jumbo jet blew up and the plane lost its hydraulics, crippling the plane so that it had no landing gear. Somehow, the pilot managed to dump fuel and get the plane down. But it cartwheeled and broke apart on landing, and the middle section flipped over, leaving the Roth kids and the others in that section hanging upside down in a cornfield.
Matz stepped in
Before the crash landing, Matz occupied the children with card games and told flight attendants he would make sure the children got off the plane safely.
Like their mother, the Roth siblings have grown up believing the experience enriched their lives.
“We’ve always been a close family, so I don’t know if it made us feel any closer,” said Jody. “But it definitely makes your appreciate things more and the little day-to-day problems run off your back a little easier.”
“I think that what it did was make our family understand what our priorities are,” said Radcliffe, the mother of two. “After being that close to death, it really makes you appreciate each other. We’re all very close. We never bicker. We understand the things that are more important. And I think Michael really helped enrich our lives by allowing us to stay children. We didn’t have to grow up before we were ready to. Basically, he and D.D. protected us from all that.
“We weren’t injured, so me and Travis probably would have been able to get off by ourselves,” she said. “But they stayed with us for 24 hours, called our parents, made sure we didn’t see a lot of things that might have traumatized us. They’re just wonderful people.”
Low profile
Matz, a three-time equestrian Olympian, has declined interviews since an article in the Louisville Courier-Journal appeared Sunday about the reunion.
“That happened a long time ago,” he told the Courier-Journal. “We just have to say thanks that my wife and I got out safely and that we were able to save those kids. Nobody knows how you react in a situation like that. Nobody knows how you react in a plane crash because, God forbid, you don’t practice anything like that.”
Staff writer Joseph Sanchez can be reached at 303-820-5458 or jsanchez@denverpost.com.
The crash of United Flight 232
The flight took off from Denver’s Stapleton Airport on July 19, 1989, and was scheduled to fly to Philadelphia via Chicago. The plane experienced a catastrophic failure of the No. 2 tail-mounted engine. The separation, fragmentation and forceful discharge of fan rotor assembly parts from the No. 2 engine led to the loss of the three hydraulic systems that powered the airplane’s flight controls. With no controls working except the throttles for the two remaining engines, the DC-10 jetliner crash-landed on the runway at Sioux City, Iowa, killing 110 of its 285 passengers and one of the 11 crew members.
