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FORT CAMPBELL, KY - On the early, frosty morning of Dec. 12,
1985, Amy Gallo's Tennessee home was filled with the aroma of
freshly baked cinnamon rolls. They were her husband's favorite, and
he hadn't had them in over six months.
Like many mothers,
Gallo was juggling the sometimes overwhelming tasks of cooking,
cleaning and tending to her two children. Her youngest, Sarita, had
just began walking, and was exploring every square inch of their
home with her newly-found ability.
Gallo's then 3-year-old
son Chip, was quietly sitting in the living room watching “He-Man,”
a popular cartoon in the 1980s.
This Thursday morning there
wasn't anything particularly unusual, except the young family was
excitingly awaiting the return of their Soldier, Richard S. Nichols,
who had just spent the past six months in Sinai, Egypt, for a
peace-keeping mission. Nichols was a sergeant in the Army and was
assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 502nd Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade
Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault), Fort Campbell,
Kentucky, as an infantryman.
Gallo's mind was all over the
place, anxiously planning in her head what she would wear, how her
children would react, and how her life would finally return back to
normal – just in time for Christmas.
“Daddy's dead.”
Gallo looked up in shock at Chip, who was staring back with a
blank stare. Gallo asked him to repeat what he said, surely
convinced that she had misheard him.
“Daddy's dead,” he repeated with conviction. “Come look.”
Amy followed Chip into the living room, where a “Breaking News”
banner was scrolling across the bottom of the television screen.
“He-Man” had been interrupted to broadcast a plane crash that
occurred in Gander, Newfoundland, carrying 248 Fort Campbell
Soldiers returning from Sinai, Egypt.
Gallo's palms began to
sweat as screen showed a map with a dotted line that stretched from
the airport in Canada to the very place Gallo shared a home with her
family, displaying the route the plane was taking. It was a map
similar to what Gallo showed her son earlier that morning when they
sat together at the table and she pointed and said, “That's where
daddy is, and this is where he's going.”
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Soldiers from 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault), carry the remains of the 248 101st Soldiers who perished in the crash of Arrow Air Flight 1285, Dec. 12, 1985, near Gander International Airport in Newfoundland, Canada. Amy Gallo's late husband, Sgt. Richard S. Nichols, remains are in the third coffin from the left. (U.S. Army courtesy photo)
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Gallo's heart sunk further every time words and phrases
like “dead” and “no survivors” echoed through the
television. Frantically, Gallo called her husband's first
sergeant's wife to confirm that what she heard was a
mistake.
“I called her and she said ‘Amy, oh Amy,
I'm coming to get you,'” said Gallo, as she reminisced on
that morning that happened nearly 30 years ago. “Once she
picked me up, she looked at me and just said, ‘I'm so
sorry,' and that's when I knew it was true and that he was
gone.”
Following the news of the crash, hundreds of
family members and fellow Soldiers filled the Fraternelli
Gym on Fort Campbell – the very same place they were
expecting to greet their Soldiers upon their return.
“There was so much chaos and confusion because no one
knew who was on that plane,” said Gallo. “We didn't have
cell phones and computers back then. It was a long and
heartbreaking waiting game. Some wives didn't find out they
were widows until two days later.”
A part of the
confusion stemmed from the fact that the manifest was
changed shortly before takeoff. Single Soldiers who had a
seat on the doomed aircraft had graciously given up their
ticket to Soldiers with spouses and children, so they could
be home earlier to be with their families.
“Here
they were trying to give a gift, and it backfired,” said
Gallo. “I couldn't imagine how they felt.”
Although
the Army has made significant progress on crisis management
since the Gander crash, those systems were not in place in
the 80s. A loss of this magnitude was foreign to the
Service, and unfortunately the widows and widowers of Task
Force 3-502 felt the brunt of that mismanagement.
“Instead of telling us right away that the plane had
crashed, they told us that it was running late,” said Gallo.
“They wanted to notify Red Cross, and psychiatric and get
all these different people in place first to help us. I get
it, but it took a long time for a lot of us to forgive
them.”
With the aching sting of grief of the loss of
their significant others still painfully existent, Gallo and
a few other widowed women formed an alliance between them
and relied on each other heavily for the support that was
suddenly ripped from them.
“We cried together; we
built each other back up from the pit of the bottom that we
found ourselves,” said Gallo. “We were a little support
system and were there for each other when we had to be.”
Gallo took her grief, coupled with the appreciation of
the widows who provided her with the support she so
desperately needed, and began volunteering to assist other
widows during that initial notification window – similar to
the Care Teams that are in place in today's Army.
The
Army, and 2nd BCT specifically, have programs such as Care
Teams in place that are charged with the delicate
responsibility of providing emotional support to spouses of
Soldiers who are killed – no matter the circumstances behind
their deaths.
“I was kind of on call for the units
who knew about my story, and I would go in about five
minutes after the ‘men in green' would,” said Gallo. “I
would come home with bruises sometimes from these women who
would hold on to me so tight.”
“You feel like you
don't belong to anyone anymore,” said Gallo. “It's an
indescribable emotion.”
The 30th anniversary of the
crash is soon approaching, and Gallo has been heavily
involved in the planning of the commemoration that will be
held. Every year Fort Campbell holds a remembrance ceremony,
and, with the exception of one, Gallo has attended every
single event.
“This is will be the first time since
1985 that a lot of these women will be at Fort Campbell
again,” said Gallo. “It will be an extremely painful
reminder for some, and I'm sure we'll all still be there for
them like we were all those years ago.”
Gallo has
since remarried and has had three other children. Her
children with Nichols, Sarita and Chip, are grown and now
have children of their own.
Chip had his first son
Sept. 10, 2015 ... who was named ... Richard S. Nichols ...
in memory of Chip's father.
By U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Sierra Fown
Provided
through DVIDS
Copyright 2015
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