Parts of Linda Rumph’s life are missing. Before the crash, there was. There is also the after. Rumph had just moved to Flagler College as a freshman, and she was still getting used to the Florida institution, which was around 300 miles away from her Isle of Palms home. Moving in day wasn’t easy. As Rumph’s parents, best friend from high school, and she packed the car to head back to South Carolina, loneliness took over. But her father would not allow his eldest daughter to go unsatisfied.
Navy Capt. Felix Vecchione called in Italian from the automobile, “Hang on a minute.” His daughter did, allowing Vecchione ample opportunity to bid her farewell with a kiss. Rumph saw her father alive for the very last time that day. Vecchione made a name for himself as a warship commander, even setting off explosives in the waters near Vietnam. He passed away considerably closer to home, on September 11, 1974, in a horrific jet crash in Charlotte that left families irreparably shattered and brought about long-lasting aviation reforms.
It has been fifty years since the September morning the jet carrying eighty-two people took off from Charleston. Of those, 72 would perish in the disaster. The day has become associated with the terrorist attacks of 2001, which left thousands of people injured and 2,977 dead in more recent decades. For the Eastern Air Lines Flight 212 families, however, 9/11 has meant something else for the past fifty years. It’s a day of introspection and quiet suffering over a crash that is fading from the collective consciousness. Residents of Charlotte and Charleston won’t find a sizable memorial honoring the dead and survivors—this in spite of the disaster taking the lives of so many people in their prime, over half of whom were from the Holy City.
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