Perusing an online auction site last week, I was stunned by a photograph that suddenly appeared on the screen. It was a newspaper photographer’s photo from 1946, of a plane crash on Long Island — with my grandfather’s name in the caption! I’ve always known that he was riding in a small plane piloted by a friend when it crashed in a potato field. My mother, eight years old, witnessed the crash, along with her mother and baby sister. My grandmother had tried to convince my grandfather not to accept a plane ride with his friend, who was an inexperienced 22-year-old pilot. My grandfather should have listened. He broke his jaw, lost all of his teeth, and suffered some other injuries. Still, he was the lucky one; the pilot was paralyzed for the rest of his life.
The Petrini Page 