From the WNIN Tri-State Public Media Center in downtown Evansville.

I'm David James, and this is Two Main Street.

So what's it like being a reporter covering breaking news?

Being on the scene of an horrific event where lives are lost and first responders are scrambling to save other lives.

It's chaos.

And you are an eyewitness trying to keep your cool and letting your listeners and viewers know what's going on.

My guests are two veteran local journalists, John Gibson and Jay Zimmer.

John is a familiar voice on WNIN-FM hosting Morning Edition, providing local news updates, weather and traffic.

And Jay covers local news for WIKY Radio and is a former TV news reporter for WFIE-TV and other news stations.

This February marks the 30th anniversary of the crash of a military aircraft into a hotel and restaurant along Highway 41 in Evansville.

Sixteen people died, nine at the former jury's in two at Jojo's Restaurant, which is now a Denny's restaurant.

Also killed in that crash, the five man crew of the Kentucky Air National Guard plane.

My guests, Jay Zimmer and John Gibson, covered the crash and the aftermath So, Jay, welcome.

Let's start with you.

OK. Jay Zimmer, where were you when the plane went down?

I was substituting for a photographer that day at Channel 14 We were a man short and another reporter and I had gone to the Republican headquarters when it was on Fares Avenue.

To cover the the announcement of a man for Congress.

Who was that?

Murdoch, I believe it was Richard Murdoch, Murdoch.

You're right.

I think it was Richard Murdoch.

That story never got on better.

We came out of the Republican headquarters after that news conference and Patricia Kleinman and I, that's who I was working with.

Now, Patricia Weinzapfel saw the fireball and we thought, well, we better check this out.

We get in the car and the news director, C.J.

is screaming on the radio.

I mean, literally screaming, and he was laid back.

So for him to be screaming was amazing.

And he's saying, get to Lynch Road in 41 immediately.

Get there immediately.

There's something happening.

Let me know if we need to send a live truck.

So recognizing the urgency in his voice, I was driving a little over the speed limit a little, and I made a left turn out of the right hand lane on Diamond Avenue, getting on to 41, and I could see smoke.

Everybody talks about the smoke, the smoke was billowing into the air and the police were already on the approaches to that area.

They were trying to wave us off and I was saying No, I'm not stopping.

And I went on through and we hit the while we were driving, Patty was across the front seat and she was changing the tape in the machine because we had the beta cams, as you remember, she was changing the tape in the beta camera, putting a fresh battery on it.

When we got there, I hit that shell station that was across the street, still doing 85 miles an hour, and we stopped the car and slammed it into park.

And I peeled out of the car and grabbed the camera.

Didn't matter where I was shooting, I set the focus ring on infinity and just just rolled the tape because everything was burning.

That's what I remember more than the smoke.

David.

Everything was on fire when I got there.

There was debris in the yard of the hotel that was burning, wrapped around the outside pool that they had at that time.

Jojo's was unrecognizable.

It was humongous there, just flames everywhere.

And if you if you got the picture of it, and then you get the smell of it, that's what that's another thing that I remember.

But everywhere you turn, there was fire.

And Patricia got her notebook and was went off looking for people to talk to.

And she spoke to people who were at the triage area that was being set up.

But if you if you saw burning debris on television in the yard of the hotel, that was my video because we got there first.

And you talking about Patty Kleiman, who became Patty Weinzapfel.

Right.

The wife of former Mayor Jonathan Weinzapfel.

I introduced them.

Oh, that's another story.

Yeah.

OK, well, you can't you can't pass that one up.

What did you introduce them at?

You know, I don't remember it.

It was at an event that we were covering.

And Jonathan was was one of the featured speakers.

And Patricia was off that day and came along.

She was at the same event for some reason.

But Jonathan's forgiven me.

No, I'm kidding.

You've got a wonderful marriage.

And I've enjoyed them of them both along for a long time.

OK, let's get to John Gibson.

Were you at that same news conference, John, when you got the news?

Yes.

Yes, I was.

Covering that news conference for WIKY, not far from the crash site there on Fares Avenue.

The news conference had ended, and so you know, as it turns out now, I wish I had hung around a few minutes longer, because what I did, I started to head back to the station.

I, I got in my, my station vehicle and headed back towards the, the hill.

Yes, indeed.

But I was on Diamond Avenue, headed west, you know, in that direction.

And we had a noisy police scanner in our station vehicle.

You know, it's, it's crackling, it's beeping, it's doing all these things.

And at one point, as I'm driving on Diamond Avenue, I thought I heard the words plane crash and I said, Really?

Plane, plane crash?

I'm trying to, you know, zero in a little bit more on what I'm hearing on the police radio.

And I'm approaching a Stringtown road there on Diamond and I noticed this.

The stoplights were out there at Stringtown and Diamond.

I thought that's that's odd.

But then I'm beginning to hear more stuff on the scanner, the police radio so I said, well, I better head for the airport, you know?

So I turned around, got the vehicle turned around, and that's from right around there around staring down a diamond is when I saw the large, huge column of black smoke.

From that distance, it really looked sort of like a mushroom cloud going up.

And so, yeah, so I j I hit the gas and started heading heading for that smoke.

I was radioing back to the radio station, telling them, you know, what I'm hearing and what at that point, what I knew.

And, you know, as the time was going on, I was picking up, you know, bits and pieces from the police radio that that a plane had crashed into the rear of the Jojo's restaurant and that both the, the restaurant and the next door hotel the jury in were on fire.

So.

So yeah.

So I'm just zipping out that that way as I'm going along Diamond Avenue, I've got police cars and other emergency vehicles also screaming in that direction.

So so yeah, as I got there, I was running out, you know, a couple of minutes behind J.

Unfortunately for for me, and so I got as close as I could, had to park the vehicle there along the shoulder of Highway 41 there just south of Lynch Road.

And of course, I'm seeing the smoke and the flames are billowing out of the two buildings.

And so yeah, you have to remember this is February 1992 in mid midmorning when it yeah, it was about 945 when the crash happened.

And so I'm there, these are the very early days of cell phones, right.

The only cell phone I had available to me at that time was a hard wired cell phone in the truck.

So what I had to do was, you know, I had my trusty cassette recorder, my, my, my news pad and I was running to the scene, you know, collecting up interviews, seeing what I could see, talking to who I could talk to and then running back to the truck where the phone was to call in my reports and so it was like that for a couple of hours, just sort of this manic situation where I was running to the scene and running back to the truck, running to the scene, running back to the truck and filing reports back to Randy Wheeler, who was anchoring the coverage back at the station.

So, yeah, it was chaotic.

Eventually, my colleague who wasn't working that morning, he would normally come in later in the day.

The late Dave Lyons caught wind of what was going on, and he eventually got to the scene as well.

And then between the two of us, we were able to cover it a little more efficiently and know it was great to have this help.

So I wasn't the only one on the scene reporting back.

But yeah, it was a chaotic scene and and yeah, you know, and I got a lot of exercise that day, that's for sure.

So, Jay, when did you learn that it was a military aircraft that had crashed?

Wasn't long after that.

You could see the wing sticking out of Jojo's restaurant in the back.

So we knew it was an aircraft.

And CJ was still screaming at me on the radio, Do you need a live truck?

You need a live truck?

And I thought, are you kidding.

That's the news director.

Yeah, that's the news director.

Yeah.

And so they sent one out there.

And I had them bring my earpiece because I was a photographer that day and I didn't have the what we called an IFB.

You know what that is?

That's the thing that goes in your ear.

So you can hear the television and be able to respond to it.

So I had them bring that out.

But as far as it being a military plane, we didn't know what it what it was in terms of what kind of aircraft until very short it has to be.

Very shortly after when I got my earpiece because I heard Ann say it was a C-130 military transport plane and I thought, oh, is that what it is?

Well, if I know and she's going to get a picture of that and get it up on the on the screen pretty quickly, which she did, she was remarkably efficient on such matters.

And that's when we realized it was it was a military transport plane.

And that that plane had an enviable safety record.

So it was unusual for that to happen.

And of course, we're going to talk later about those controversial touch and go landings and that the crew was practicing what had happened.

Now, those first interviews, who did you talk to, John?

Well, I talked to someone from the hotel.

I believe it was a manager or an assistant manager or someone.

I was able to get some information from her.

Of course, she wasn't, you know, giving me a whole lot of good information at that point.

But you could you could tell by the fear in her voice that, you know, this was a serious situation there were casualties.

You could you were beginning to get that impression pretty much from the start.

And so I was just talking to witnesses around the scene there as much as I could eventually got to talk to, you know, fire chiefs.

And then the police chief was eventually out there.

But, yeah, as far as learning what kind of plane it was and such that that came along fairly, fairly quickly.

And then it was a C-130.

And I think all of us, you know, was familiar with those those big lumbering C-130s who had been which I'd been doing these touch and go landings and and training missions at the regional airport, Evansville Regional so it you know, it's my my parents lived not far from the airport as well.

So I remember seeing them there again for days, maybe weeks before the crash.

During these these practice missions and all.

So in a way, it wasn't all that surprising that, you know, we knew now that it was one of those planes that had been doing those those missions, those training missions.

And and so, of course, in any breaking news situation, you're going to have some confusion.

You're going to have some false reports.

At one point during that morning, I believe the local coroner got some bad information that there were like 25 people on that C-130.

You're right.

I remember that.

Yeah.

So for a while, the the death toll was thought to be quite a bit higher, as it turned out.

Of course, only five crew members were aboard that plane.

So so that was just some of that, you know, that confusion that you typically have with a breaking news situation.

And we just had to ride it out and work to get the numbers accurate.

I know some of the initial reports, people seeing the smoke and the proximity near the Whirlpool Corporation, which was in still was still in production at that time.

And there were hundreds of employees probably in that building.

And that crash site is not too far from the Whirlpool building at all.

Right.

So it was could have been even much worse.

Yes.

Yes.

It was quite the tragic event.

But yeah, it happened to land, you know, at the rear of one building near the restaurant.

Which unfortunately two lives were claimed there.

And then you had more lives lost in the area.

And next door, you know, you always struck me as a little odd when you when you see something like this happen at a hotel, you'd probably think that the victims, you know, if you had the casualties, there would be perhaps out of town people.

But as it turned out, they were all local folks who were members of a local business who had a training conference going on there in the building.

And those, sadly, were the victims of of the plane crash Pluming seminar, I believe.

Yes.

At that time.

And so, Jay, how long were you at the scene then?

30 hours.

I stayed there all night long and gathered more information after our 10:00 news.

And I did live shots for ever from the scene.

As soon as the live truck got there, we went live and I went live on both of your shows that day.

And I know you're on midday with Ann I think and was anchoring in the minutes right then.

And then you did cut in throughout the afternoon and then we went and we just had a six and ten I think back then didn't we have a five then two we may have had a five then.

I don't think I did five, six and ten.

We made a special report.

I was there of course I was anchoring at Channel 14 at the time.

And I know you know, Jay, we were going to Jay constantly during afternoon whenever you had something you would let us know and we'd go out to you because I had the same thing that John had in terms of us an early cell phone in the live truck.

Right.

And I was calling in saying, I've got this now, OK, we'll come to you, get ready.

So I put my thing in my ear and get ready now.

Was this the first big story of your career, John, John and Jay?

Well, for me, yes.

Yes, of course.

The the Aces plane crash had happened 15 years earlier.

That was before my time.

So this yeah, this was certainly the biggest story I had covered up to that point.

I mean, I was still a pretty green reporter at the time.

I hadn't been doing it so long.

And I'm guessing, you know, if I heard some of the some of my reports from that day, I would probably cringe a bit because I was I was still a pretty, pretty green reporter.

But Lord knows I learned a lot that day.

I think anybody who was on the scene that day learned a lot, both the news media and the first responders.

As I said, I was, you know, running chaotically back and forth, filing those reports but, you know, it was a learning experience.

And, you know, as a radio reporter, I mean, I learned the the importance of describing what you see.

All right.

I mean, as a radio reporter, you are the eyes and ears of the listeners.

And, you know, it sounds simple, but but it's very important to paint an accurate vivid picture of what you're seeing and what people at the scene are telling you and to convey it to the thousands of people who are listening and they're depending on you to describe what you see you're there.

They are not.

So I learned a lot that day about describing a scene and painting that picture for folks who are who are listening and and depending on you and just the opposite for a TV reporter, people want to see pictures, right?

They want to see what's going on.

So that's your focus is get get that shot.

That was that was something that I remember doing a lot that day because I was standing right in front of the fire.

You could see the fire behind me.

And I would often step out of the way and and let people see that without me being in the middle of it.

Right.

Right, right, right.

So what were the what were the first responders?

Were they standoffish?

Were you able to approach them or would you just leave them alone for a while?

I left them alone for a while.

But when I started needing to get sound bites for our television reports, I started just kind of gingerly asking.

Sure.

I didn't just walk up and stick a microphone in their faces.

I had learned that lesson a long time before but I would say, is there anything you want to tell us?

What's what's going on?

What are you feeling?

What are you seeing?

And they would open up and we would did a number of live shots.

One of the one of the ones I remember most vividly was an interview I got with Bishop Gerald Gettelfinger, who was the the bishop of the archdiocese or the Diocese of Evansville at the time.

And he said he had heard it on television and had come out to see what kind of spiritual comfort he could provide.

And he was incredible at it.

Well, it was it was just like you said, it was chaos.

And I think as we started to learn of the casualties, this became such a huge story.

And when did you learn that there were more than maybe a couple of people in that plane killed, John?

Well, a little later on in the morning, we had a pretty significant a little news gathering there with the fire chief of Evansville, the police chief of Evansville.

And they started getting, you know, some some estimations.

I think that was maybe the first news conference in which in which they confirmed that there were multiple fatalities in the hotel, two people missing in the in the restaurant.

And that number of people on the plane was still maybe a little uncertain at that point.

But gradually, you know, throughout the day, the information became a little more clear as they did more investigating and we did more questioning.

So by the end of the day, you know, it became determined that the victims inside the hotel where workers from the Evansville Business, Plumbing and Industrial Supply, that was the folks who were attending a seminar on the fourth floor of the Drury Inn And, you know, just a tragic case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time when the plane crashed into the rear of Jo Jo's it sent up that fireball that we've talked about here, and that sent flames right into the the fourth floor of the hotel next door there.

And that's where those workers from a plumbing, industrial and industrial supply were attending that room in a room 416.

Right, right.

What became a fireball at that time.

So this is a national story.

Oh, yes.

As once it hits the wires and everything's a national story, did you have to feed anything to the networks, Jay?

I fed to CNN from another station's live truck that was sent there as a contractor to CNN.

But I was feeding them and they were wonderful.

To work with.

I enjoyed them a lot.

Yeah.

And I think we were sending stuff to both CNN and the AP radio network WIKY at the time.

Was a member of the Associated Press Radio Network, and I saw that they, of course, were wanting information from the scene.

So, yeah, I believe I appeared on there their airwaves that day, along with Dave Lyons and Randy Wheeler.

And yeah, it was, you know, a nationwide story for sure.

I was when I got back to the station later that night, I sort of went back and saw all of the AP news alerts and urgent and bulletins and all those reports that were generated.

A lot of it from folks like from Jay and myself.

And that was spreading the word, you know, all around the world.

And I sure I assume our footage was on NBC Nightly News.

Oh, certainly it was.

It was on there.

It was on CNN and it was on some of the other cable news networks.

They were clamoring for whatever we could provide them for whatever we shot.

And of course, this happened out on Highway 41 at Lynch Road, incredibly busy intersection just about any time of the day.

So was this an immediate traffic nightmare there?

It was, yeah.

They had to close down Highway 41.

I was having some difficulty getting close to the scene because so many vehicles had already stopped and either pulled over or just stayed there in the middle of the road.

Like I said, I was running a few minutes behind Jay, so by the time I got there, traffic was pretty clogged up and it was very, very difficult to get close.

But of course you had people stunned to see what they were seeing.

So a lot of folks stopped, got out.

Perhaps some of them helped in some way.

That they could.

But yeah, it was a lot of rubbernecking, I guess, as I'm sure you would call it.

It was something that you obviously don't see every day.

And so, yeah, the traffic was that was a bad situation, lots of folks.

And it became quite, quite the spectacle.

You know, for folks who couldn't get close to the scene.

There were a lot of a lot of spectators there.

Now that, of course, the scene is is chaos and the flames and when did they knocked the flames down.

How long did that take, Jay?

Golly, that that took a while because there was as I said, when we got there, everything was wall to wall fire.

And I remember seeing the dress, regional airport firefighting truck show up.

It was light green or yellow.

Right?

Right.

There was an odd color.

I saw them show up and there were fire engines coming from everywhere, from every direction.

It took them a good couple of hours to get that fire under control because it wasn't just Jojo's.

It was The Drury Inn as well.

There was fire along the wall there where the jet fuel had splashed and ignited.

Right.

So it took a while to get the fire out and it was spectacular to watch.

Well, one estimate was like 6000 gallons of fuel on that on that C-130 cargo plane.

So it was definitely a ball of fire.

Yeah.

Well, I believe the first folks on the scene would have been in the Evansville Fire Department there.

Was there a run initially?

And there is a station of station two, I believe it is down there at Max Road in Lynch Road.

So they were the first ones there and then you had several, you know, obviously more quickly became a second alarm fire.

And I think you'll also hear stories of a lots of other firefighters just showing up from different departments.

It got a little chaotic.

And and I think one of the things first responders will tell you that they learned from that was to, you know, to be a little more organized in that way and not not to allow just everybody to come from all over the place, you know, to have some sort of idea who's there and who's not.

So you can obviously keep track of everyone because you're in a dangerous situation there and you want to make sure you you know, who is on the scene and who's not.

Well, we talked about some of the victims and one of them died later on Evansville Police Officer James Gibson Jr.

I understand he rushed in to, I think, the hotel and inhaled a lot of the smoke and everything.

Right.

And then they died what, a couple of weeks later?

Weeks later, yes.

So another casualty.

Yeah.

Yeah.

The toll depends on who you ask.

It's either 16 or 17.

If you if you count the police officer, I believe the cause of his death was actually a drug overdose.

He was taking medications prescribed for injuries suffered in the air from the crash scene.

So, you know, so you a lot of folks would consider that the final death toll was 17.

And we had two employees at Jojo's yes.

Those five crew members of the guard plane.

And then those victims in at the seminar and room there were shooting.

Yeah.

Right.

So right now, the investigation is of course, speculation begins right away after the plane crash and on the NTSB gets involved and of course the military gets off to very much in because this was an Air Guard plane out of out of Louisville.

That crash I think it was the Kentucky Guard 120 third tactical airlift wing at Stanford Field in Louisville practicing those touch and go landings at Evansville Airport.

It was a four turboprop military transport and those touch and go landings have been, I guess, routine at a lot of airports.

It was nothing really unusual, was it?

Well, you know, they can use the federal any federal airport they want, right?

Yeah.

And so they were doing that and then just lost altitude.

The pilot and I, I think it was up.

He was a flight instructor, tried to take control and then they couldn't get control of it and like a nosedive right into.

Yeah.

The, you know, the plane just stalled and it just essentially fell out of the sky right there.

Apparently, there was just no way that they were able to get it restarted and and avoid the crash.

Yeah.

You're right, John.

They were practicing an engine difficulty and they did a touch and go and and lifted off again, but they didn't have enough power and they were trying to a couple of people I interviewed mentioned that they heard the engines revving before the plane fell.

And that's what they were trying to do is was regain enough speed, enough air speed to get the airplane back into an attitude where where it could climb.

It was only about a thousand feet up when.

No, when all of this happened but it stalled.

And as John said, and that's the terminology I've heard more than anything else, the plane literally fell out of the sky.

And I think you described it as a lumbering aircraft.

I mean, this is a military air air cargo plane.

It's huge.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We've been seeing them, you know, flying over the city for four days.

And I think weeks really before the crash happened again, taking part in those training missions, the the touch and go landings.

And also, I believe they were trying you know, some of the training involved, like, you know, shutting down an engine.

And how how you respond to that, I don't know that that's exactly the case or if we know if that was exactly what they were doing when the plane crashed.

But we do know that the plane stalled.

And in as Jay said, it was at such a low altitude they did not have any chance of getting the engines revved up again to where they could avoid the crash.

I'm trying to remember, did the military take control of that scene?

Yes, they did eventually.

Yeah.

Now, the next day, the very next day, they had a news conference attended by a lot of folks beyond just the local news media.

At that point, we had microphones up on the podium from all over, you know, nationwide networks and such.

And that news conference was held at that hotel across the street, the one that was not hit, not damaged.

And I remember a military spokesman expressing shock.

And I think Jay said something earlier to that C-130 planes had a really good record.

He said these C-130 planes just don't crash.

And of course, it struck some of us a little cold because obviously there was a crash right across the street there.

16 bodies.

And so, yeah, it caused a little bit of controversy and the Kentucky Air National Guard agreed not to fly any more training missions that Evansville Regional after that crash, and they haven't since.

Jay, when was your first live shot from the scene?

Couldn't have been much later than quarter after 11.

It was like about 10:00 or a little before 10:00 when it when it all happened.

And we got there so fast.

And with news director C.J.

Button hollering, Do you need a live truck?

Do you need a live truck?

We got one out there pretty quickly.

So it was probably a little after 11:00.

And then I did live shots from probably every 15 to 20 minutes for the next day and a half.

Right now you mentioned this earlier, John Gibson, that as a reporter or as a kind of relatively new reporter at the time covering this accident, and you did learn some lessons about covering such events and what are some of those lessons?

Well, as we mentioned earlier, especially if you're working for a radio and this of course is long before everyone had a camera in their pocket and you know, you got it and you'd be doing a Facebook Live or something today.

The most important thing was describing what you see and gathering up the information, making sure you've got accurate information.

And that's that's very difficult when a breaking news situation.

In fact, if you listen to one breaking news happening on NPR, they'll pretty much tell you from the start, you have to remember that some of this information will likely change as as we learn more and as as time goes on.

But yeah, you're just looking for those reliable sources, those eyewitnesses and and for me working in radio, the big key was just remembering that you are the eyes and the ears and you've got to paint that picture, you know, with with your words and with the descriptions you're receiving from people at the scene and what you're seeing.

Because, again, you are the eyes.

They're not there.

You are.

You've got to describe what you see and work.

You're you're you're, you know, do your very best to provide an accurate picture of what you're seeing there.

And and of course, yeah, I was recording people.

We were playing back soundbites you know, right from the start, you know, folks I was talking to to again, paint that picture and, you know, present the accurate and accurate summation of what's going on.

Of course, your adrenaline is is fired up like this and you're and you've got to control yourself.

Right, guys?

Just kind of relax just a minute here and get it done.

But it's hard to control all your emotions on something like that.

Oh, yeah, it is.

And it is.

Is the adrenaline's rushing.

And again, that's where you have to be careful and not allow yourself to to perhaps say something that's not 100% the fact or that you don't know for a fact at that point.

You know, I learned a lot about, you know, how you how you describe breaking news and that is that you you know, one way of describing it is that you sort of you know, you go into your journalist mindset, you're thinking about the all the who's the who, what, where.

And so sometimes after covering these things that you don't know yet and so how you describe it sometimes is, well, you know, we don't know yet if this is the case or if that is the case.

You're essentially just, you know, presenting these questions that are still lingering and and that's how you cover it.

You know, you sort of you know, you go through all these questions that need to be answered.

You know, you don't want to speculate.

Yeah, exactly.

You avoid that always burns.

You sure?

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

I always, like should avoid the speculation and just present the questions that need to be answered.

Yeah.

So, Jay, what how did you control your adrenaline there?

There was so much information coming my way and there was so much to do.

But Patricia Kleinman was finding the triage area and talking to people who were hurt.

She was bringing people over for me to interview.

There was just too much going on for me to allow my emotions to get in the way, because if they did, I wouldn't be able to do what I was out there to do.

And that's I don't know how I learned that, David, but I did.

And it came in very handy on February 6th 1992, I can guarantee you.

Now you have this.

You said this was the biggest story you'd covered too, up to that time.

Yes.

My goodness.

And you were on the scene for said 30 hours.

30 hours.

My goodness.

That just amazing.

So what did you do when you finally left the scene?

I went and took a shower because I smelled like aviation fuel.

Mm hmm.

And I slept for quite a while I was amazed that I could sleep because I kept seeing the fire in my mind.

And as I said, the combination of senses, the sights, the sounds and the smells were there with me to this day.

30 years later.

Mm hmm.

Yeah.

Well, that's one thing.

Yeah.

The sensory experience of being at a scene like that John, it left me a little shaken, I must say.

I mean, after that, I. Yeah, you know, I got a few plane crash nightmares, that kind of thing.

You're right.

I did, too.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

When you're on the scene and especially.

Yeah, we talk about the adrenaline and how you're trying to get the information.

It's later, once you're looking back at it all and sort of recalling it all that, that.

Yeah, you can you get that maybe a little bit of PTSD, you know?

No, not need I.

Exactly, exactly.

And of course, you know.

Yeah, I'm saying I had some nightmares and that but I can only imagine the trauma of the first responders who are, you know, right there on the scene and of course, the survivors who are much closer to the disaster than than we reporters were.

You know, that that is certainly a trauma that will stick with you.

Were there many injured people at the scene?

There were some that I can't remember.

Too many.

There weren't too many.

I, I think Patrick Kleinman interviewed one or two with me holding the microphone for.

I remember that, but I don't remember too many serious injuries because people at the hotel, they were saying they're probably checked out by that time in the morning.

Right.

And then the and the breakfast crowd had left.

Jojo's at that.

There were about 20 people in the restaurant at the time, and they all got out except for the two employees that were in the back right.

Right.

Exactly.

Yeah.

And so there were some injuries and there were some folks being airlifted out of there, too.

I remember describing helicopters, medical helicopters that were lifting a few folks out.

I don't have the injury numbers in front of me, but yeah, there were certainly at least a few folks who who are seriously injured enough that they needed to be airlifted out to to local hospitals.

And I'm guessing we had a few folks go out on, you know, regular ground transportation.

Right, right.

Exactly.

When did the bodies start coming out of them?

That was later in the much later in the day.

It was about dusk when they started getting the bodies out because the Air Force wanted the scene to be undisturbed so they could literally pull the pieces of the plane out.

And they were going to take it back to Standard Field, which they did, and literally put the plane back together to try to figure out what went wrong.

So they didn't want to disturb the scene to get the bodies out until they actually found them in the course of getting the debris out.

So the forensic sure.

Or investigation, as I recall, there were still some bodies on the scene the next day when they were conducting that news conference.

As you say, maybe some had been removed that evening before, but that next day, there were still some some remains.

I think the restaurant people were still in there the next day.

Yeah, I'm sure it was them.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And of course, there were hearings after the crash to the investigators presenting their findings.

And of course, that went on for months.

Then finally, some settlements in the case.

Right.

The military, I understand, paid $36.3 million for wrongful death, personal injury and property damage claims.

And it took $1.7 million to restore the old jury in which amazingly reopened four months after the crash.

Yes, it was amazing.

It was a quick turnaround there.

It was nine months for Jojo's.

Really?

Yeah.

They got the they did get the restaurant rebuilt and and reopened.

And it is still a you still have a restaurant and a hotel there.

Now, there are different brands.

Now there's an operation and a Denny's now.

Exactly.

Exactly.

But yeah, and I think there's a little plaque or something.

There is.

It's outside the front door of Denny's and it's in a little flower bed.

I'd look at it every time we eat there.

Mm hmm.

Yeah, I remember.

Yeah.

There's a plaque remembering the that that terrible day.

My guests are veteran journalists John Gibson and James Zimmer.

We've been revisiting their firsthand coverage of the crash of a military C-130 aircraft in Evansville 30 years ago.

It remains one of the biggest news stories in the Evansville area.

Now, let's learn more about my guests and their careers.

But first, I need a health update, guys.

Now, we'll start with you, Jay.

You had a stroke January 3rd.

21.

Yes, I did.

And have you fully recovered well, as well as fully as I can.

As you can probably tell, there are some there are some speech issues that are very minor, but they're still noticeable and some aches and pains that I have now that I haven't had before.

But of course, age has a lot to do with that.

Where were you at when you suffered your stroke at home?

I was just getting up to get ready to go to work.

I go to work at like 2:15 in the morning.

And I had just gotten up and I was heading for the bathroom and I fell, which I don't do.

I'm my balances one of my assets.

And I got managed to get up and then I fell again and my left side wouldn't work.

So I called to my wife, you know, Sunny, I've got a problem and once I got back on my feet, I felt better.

I thought, well, I'm just going to go ahead and get dressed and go to work.

And my, my wife and my daughter said, no, you're not and they took me to the hospital.

And I was there January 6th when the insurrection took place.

And I was trying to cover it from the hospital.

Bed.

Well, that'd be frustrating.

It was.

Yeah, but your news instincts kicked in.

You wanted to get part of it, be part of the story.

There.

Absolutely.

That's what I do.

That's right.

So any you said any lingering effects from that besides.

Yeah, there are.

I have some some speech problems.

I have some balance problems.

And I have a little bit of dexterity, difficulty in my left hand, which has ended my tenure as a guitarist.

I still play the bass, but not as well.

And it's it affects my typing, which is frustrate as all giddy up when I'm in a newsroom trying to write a story.

I can still do it, but it's my accuracy is well, there are those at the station who would argue that my accuracy never was very good.

You used to say that.

Well, no, I probably did, didn't I?

Yes.

So just a few more typos now, I guess.

Well, a few more notes.

You're back full time then.

Oh, yes.

I've been full time.

This this whole period.

I mean, even, you know, I had to take sick leave because right after I finished with the stroke, I got Covid and I had bronchitis at the same time.

And then also in 20, 21, I had carpal tunnel surgery on my left arm.

And I had two eye surgeries, so.

Well, thank goodness you're here, Jay.

Now, John, John had a bout with COVID too.

And what were those symptoms?

Like, John?

Well, it was about, what was it, early January.

And maybe listeners noticed I was missing for about a week there.

For me, it was just pretty much felt like a chest cold, I guess for a few days, a little bit of fever.

But, you know, I was fully vaccinated and and boosted and I'm thinking that helped keep me from getting more sick than I was again, that I missed about a week's worth of work here.

But yeah, you know, I just had a little fever and little bit of a chest gold, so I thought, well, we should take a COVID test, just to be sure.

And oddly enough, I was in fact, of COVID positive.

My wife never did test positive.

So that's just know how unusual and odd this virus can be really is due to be, you know, living with someone who's got it and not to get it yourself.

While other folks spread it all over the place.

You know, it's just very, very hard to tend to some people that just slams on it really does.

They just have it sure does.

And it's just amazing.

Other people, just like you said, a head cold or something, sore throat and they'd bounce right back.

I was somewhere in the middle.

I mean, I certainly wasn't sick enough to where I had to go to the hospital.

Or anything, but I was you know, I laid low for a couple of days there with with quite the chest cold and a little fever.

Now, let's go back to your your careers your first job in journalism, Jay Zimmer.

My first job in journalism was WIFN/FM in Franklin, Indiana.

I lived in Indianapolis at the time.

My first night on the air was in November of 1968, where I was doing what we used to call Rip and read.

You remember that ripping the copy off the wire machine and reading it live on the air.

And that was the night Richard Nixon was elected president.

So that was where I got my start.

Rip and read.

Yes.

And a lot of that wire copy is not written for broadcast at that time.

It was, a lot of it was newspaper writing.

So it was a little weird when you, when you read it out loud.

Oh yes, definitely.

John, your first job in well well if you count college, I guess my first broadcast news would have been around 1987 at the University of Southern Indiana WSWI.

So that's where I was doing news.

I was doing it when I was a college station.

So I was doing a little bit of everything.

I was, I was deejaying, I was doing music and all that.

And then, yeah, I got the full time gig at WIKY then in 1989.

So that's when my news career really took off and yeah, so I was learning a lot.

Of course as I mentioned by 1992 I'd been at WIKY for a few years, but I was still learning, still a little green.

And I think in this business you continue to learn, you know, as my boss used to say, if you don't grow, you die.

So, you know, you it's a learning process, you know, every day, every year.

Did you always want to be in journalism, Jay?

I wanted to be a professional musician that's where my degrees are.

I have a bachelor's degree in music and an associate degree in music performance.

My idea in getting into radio, my dad got me into that, that first job because he was he handled a group insurance for the station owner.

And the station owner mentioned that he needed somebody with a voice.

My dad says, Well, my son's got one.

So the idea was I was going to I was going to do broadcasting until I became the next Paul McCartney.

And I've I've been waiting now about 53 years.

It hasn't happened yet, but I'm still hopeful.

Now, you do record yes.

I own a studio now, our studio, and I've made a few records and I've made some for other people.

And you're also an author you had a book, three of them out about a pirate or something, wasn't it Code of Theophilus" was about modern day.

And back in the day, Pirates Well, give me a little brief summary of that one that's intriguing.

Well, Theophilus Turner was a real guy.

He sailed with Captain Kidd.

And in my book, I made this up.

He hid some things, some valuables that he had stolen from Captain Kidd in the somewhere on the East Coast and a newspaper editor.

Any resemblance to the author is strictly deliberate.

A newspaper editor gets wind of it and starts looking for the treasure.

And the modern day pirates don't want him to find it.

So there's a conflict.

There is the conflict now.

Now, John, you are a musician as well.

That is true.

Well, yeah, I've always been a musical person.

I actually I worked in a record store throughout the decade of the eighties here in Evansville.

And during that time, I was playing drums for several different local bands, playing at places like the Ross Theater and the Alhambra and in various parties and what have you.

So, yeah, so I was always a very musical guy.

But also during those years, I was always told that, I mean, going as far back as grade school, I guess people would say, well, you know, you've got quite the voice for maybe radio, maybe you should get into radio.

And so after several years at the record store, I met someone who in fact did the same thing.

You should come out to USI and, you know, get on the campus radio station there.

And so sure enough, eventually I made that career change, got into broadcasting and and yeah, I've been on the air ever since.

A record store.

Yeah.

Was that just like a dream job?

It was looking at all those album covers.

Yes.

Indeed.

I worked at the full city records.

Maybe some of the older folks here in the community remember that it eventually became Cats Records.

And yes, I was a I was on top of the music scene there throughout the 1980s.

Do you have an album collection?

Oh yes.

I've got hundreds of albums, hundreds of CDs, I've got tons of vinyl I think a lot of that is going to be my my retirement plan actually.

Now that vinyl is such a revival going back, all record stores are back big.

Yes.

No, that's great.

So who are some of your favorite artists besides the Beatles?

Well, you mentioned that I was a Beatles fan and I most certainly am, but I also enjoy Noel Harrison, Santa Monica Pier.

I enjoy the Eagles very much.

I like just about anybody who sings well where three or four guys get up to the microphones and can do something there.

That's that's just grabs a hold of me very well.

I love the Stones, and I like to kid about Keith Richards.

Well, give me a give me.

You're kidding about him.

No, he'll never die because there's nothing that can survive in his body.

After all the drugs he's taken.

He's preserved, isn't he?

He certainly is definitely your favorite fellow.

Oh, yeah.

I'm a huge Beatles fan as well.

Well, lots of classic rock.

I'm also a big Stones fan.

You know, The Who, The Kinks Bob Dylan, all those folks.

And and then also, I, you know, then when when the the whole punk and new wave started happening, like in the late seventies and eighties, I was into a lot of that as well.

Talking Heads, R.E.M., The Clash, all those bands.

You know, like I said, I worked in a record store for ten years, so I, I got to hear a lot of music, a lot of music that maybe folks didn't get to hear so much on the radio stuff that we were playing in the record store.

And so, yeah, I'm a big musical guy.

And, and to this day, you know, I've also been in various bands right now, Peggy Piero and I, we do a solo acoustic thing or well, a duo acoustic thing that you might catch us out and about now and again.

I'm maybe I'm wrong with this.

Didn't used to have like listening rooms in the record store.

Record store?

Yes, they did.

Yeah, they did.

We didn't really have such a thing at our place, but yeah, we were always playing music and you could ask to hear something and then we'd, we'd stick it on the, the stereo for sure.

Swann Records in Indianapolis did have those.

There were more of them.

Yeah.

You put like headsets on.

Really?

Yeah.

That's cool.

That really is.

Well, guys, this has been a lot of fun.

We were going to talk about the state of journalism, but I think we've already covered that, the importance of being fair and accurate and keeping your cool out there.

It's a challenge.

But you guys have have done it well over the years.

Well, you too, sir.

Well, thank you.

Now, you guys are, of course, are committed to getting the story of not first but just getting it right.

I think that's the main thing.

You don't want to come back and bite you and being fair, of course.

And my motto is there are often more than two sides to a story.

The more questions you ask, the more you learn and couldn't agree more.

You know, John Gibson and Jay Zimmer, thanks for being my guests on Two Main Street.

Thank you, David.

Thank you for having us, David.

Two, Main Street is presented by Jeffrey Berger of Berger Wealth Services at Baird Private Wealth Management.