The Osprey was originally built in FL. When it was ready to be introduced to the public, the flight plan was to leave FL with a top rep from Boeing, a top Marine officer and a key design person who was hands’ on with the project from the beginning. That worker was the oldest son of my dear friends. When they left FL there were 2 planes—the Osprey and a chaser plane. He was on the Osprey. They were supposed to land in NC to refuel and the Marine officer was to switch places with Bob. When they got close, the Osprey had better fuel range than they had calculated and didn’t need to stop, but the chaser plane did. They told the Osprey pilot to just keep going on to Quantico where there was a huge ceremony planned with bleacher sets for quests and a lot of “top brass”. The Osprey was to buzz the people and circle back over the water and then land and the “top brass” on the plane was to get off first. Of course, he was still on the chaser plane but he said it didn’t matter, so the Osprey continued on to Quantico. It buzzed and circled back and when it got back over the water, it crashed. It took a couple of days to find Bob’s body.
I hadn’t really talked about it with my friends excepted briefly when they brought it up. Bob’s dad died this year and when I went down to NC to spend time with his mom, we went out to lunch and it all came spilling out. They got to listen to the recording on the black box, which turned out to be the only way they could finally cope with what happened.

If you are at the game Saturday, when those Ospreys fly over, please say a little prayer for Bob and the pilot on that inaugural Osprey flight.