About Crash Course: The Portland Air Disaster that Made History and Changed History
Presented by Julie Whipple
Accidents don't just happen. On a cold winter night in 1978,
a DC8 passenger jet with 189 aboard crash landed, out of fuel in a suburban
neighborhood on East Burnside. Ten people died. The pilot was blamed and
stripped of his career, and a sweeping transformation of flight crew training
took place that made United Flight 173 (in)famous worldwide as the model for
failure and change. That was only the half of it.
Hiding in plain sight for years in an attorney's file boxes,
the forgotten truths of the landmark air disaster reveal much more: an emotional
journey tethered to the disgraced pilot and a three-year-old survivor named
Lisa who became an unlikely hero for justice and public safety in the
rollercoaster legal battle that followed. This is the long-overdue, true story
of a misunderstood airline disaster that forever changed the lives of those on
board and countless others -- including yours.
About the Speaker:
Julie Whipple is an award-winning journalist and educator
from Portland, Oregon. She holds an MFA in
creative writing with an emphasis on nonfiction, and has worked as a reporter
in Kenya and Tanzania where she was the East Africa correspondent for the
London-based, weekly news magazine Africa Economic Digest. She also filed
stories for the London Observer, South Magazine, Radio France International and
Deutsche Welle among others. In the United States, her work has been published
in the Christian Science Monitor, The Oregonian, the Portland Business Journal
and Portland Monthly Magazine. She and her first book, Crash Course (2018)
have been featured on KOIN 6 News, KATU 2, KBOO radio, The Oregonian and
Powell's on Burnside. She holds professional memberships in the Authors Guild
and PEN America.
Photo credit: Lukas Ketner, Portland illustrator.
