In the summer of 1972 a bomb destroyed a commercial jet over Vietnam. Six members of one Wisconsin family were killed.

I was seven years old. I grew up in the shadow of it without ever fully understanding what I was living inside.

This is Episode 1. The Summer of Less Than.

Voice Text Andy

If this story is part of your story too — I'd love to hear from you. hazyyellowfeeling@gmail.com

Before I tell you what happened to them, I want to spend some time letting them be alive again.

A son who built a stone wall by the lake and never finished it. A CEO who talked the board into buying a company plane. A mother who kept the snack drawer full and the door unlocked. A girl behind a camera. A boy with a postcard and a joke about an M16. A girl who danced. The youngest who just turned 13.

This is Episode 2. The Long Goodbye.

Voice Text Andy

If this story is part of your story too — I'd love to hear from you. hazyyellowfeeling@gmail.com

Bangkok, June 1972. A twenty-nine-year-old lieutenant in the Royal Thai Police walks his fiancée and his seven-year-old daughter onto a Cathay Pacific flight. He makes sure they're seated over the wing. He seats them, and gets off the plane.

Under the seat in front of them is a cosmetics case. Inside it, two pounds of explosives.

He'd taken out insurance policies on both of them.

He thought the plane would go down over open water. The wreckage would sink. No bodies, no fragments, no case.

Man plans. God laughs.

This is Episode 3.

Voice Text Andy

If this story is part of your story too — I'd love to hear from you. hazyyellowfeeling@gmail.com

In the summer of 1972 a bomb destroyed a passenger jet over Vietnam. Six members of one Wisconsin family were killed. This is the trailer.

Voice Text Andy

If this story is part of your story too — I'd love to hear from you. hazyyellowfeeling@gmail.com

June 15th, 1972. Twenty-nine thousand feet. Lunch coming down the aisle.

It wasn’t quick. The plane came apart and it fell. And most of them were alive for what came next.

It took two and a half minutes to reach the ground.

Two uncles fly to Saigon. Six caskets come home in July. And in Holy Angels Cemetery, a twenty-two-year-old man stands at the graves of his entire family.

This is Episode 4. Two and a Half Minutes.

Voice Text Andy

If this story is part of your story too — I'd love to hear from you. hazyyellowfeeling@gmail.com

July 25th, 2022. Lake Forest Hospital. A phone rings in a dying man's room.

Fifty years earlier, a photograph came out of Vietnam. A little girl, on fire, running down a road. You've seen it. Everyone has.

Seven days later, a plane carrying six members of one Wisconsin family went down over that same country.

Two uncles flew to Saigon to bring them home. One of them couldn't just sit and wait.

He held up his hands. I have two hands, he said. Surgical hands.

They let him in.

This is Episode 5. Two Hands.

Voice Text Andy

If this story is part of your story too — I'd love to hear from you. hazyyellowfeeling@gmail.com