In nearly two decades of life on the edge, Jerry Don Galloway has broken his back, neck, jaw, collarbone and some ribs, among other bones. He’s wrecked a knee, totaled a few cars, jumped out of speeding boats and gotten stomped by more than a few bulls.
By the way, he also has been in a plane crash.
“Getting banged around has been a big part of my life,” he says. “I guess I’m pushing my luck as far as I can.”
At first glance, the 32-year-old rodeo cowboy might seem like a real-life Max Klein, the character played by Jeff Bridges in the film “Fearless.”
Facing death in a jet about to crash, Klein finds a sudden, unexpected serenity. When he survives, the feeling of freedom and a psychological state of denial meld into a sense of invulnerability that has him speeding down highways and teetering on ledges, reckless and unafraid.
“I guess I could see where a person could really snap to that kind of decision,” Galloway says. “But my opinion is how you react depends on your life before the crash. If you were always afraid, it confirms your fears. If you weren’t, it confirms your way of life.”
He was in Column B long before he boarded Delta Flight 1141 Aug. 31, 1988. The plane crashed on takeoff at Dallas-Ft. Worth International Airport, killing 14 people and injuring 94.
“In my life I rode bulls that jerked me around more than that plane did,” he says.
Galloway, who produces rodeos as well as performs in them, doesn’t mean to be flip. He recalls vividly the fear of feeling the plane shake and skid down the runway, watching luggage fly through the cabin, trying to see and breathe through thick smoke.
He grabbed a pillowcase to use for a mask and escaped through a hole in the broken plane, only to return three times to help others.
But then he got on with his life, even after the Delta jet he boarded the next day screeched and shook and scared the passengers before safely aborting the takeoff.
“After that, the fellow I was with said, `Forget it, I’m walking,’ ” Galloway says. “But I was supposed to be at a rodeo in Winnemucca, Nev., and I’d never missed a performance. I realized I must really want to get to that rodeo.”
He caught the next flight out and arrived a hero, the rodeo star who survived a plane crash. Galloway usually performs as a rodeo clown, distracting the bulls so a fallen cowboy can get away, a stuntman jumping over charging bulls or letting them jump over him, and a bullfighter.
In rodeo, bullfighting means a 70-second encounter with a bull, with no fancy outfits, no sharp objects and, hopefully, no blood. You face down and control the bull, pile up points for looking sharp and get the heck out.
“I’ve been doing silly things like that since I was 14,” says Galloway, who grew up in Colleyville, Texas, and now has a 120-acre spread in Azle, which straddles the Tarrant-Parker county line. “It’s just my belief that when it’s your turn to go, you’re gonna go. And it’s not my turn.”
For a few months, Galloway says, smelling smoke would trigger panic attacks. Nightmares about smoky airplanes temporarily replaced nightmares about getting ground into the dust by a bull.
“But I just pulled out of it,” he says. “I’m sure being busy had a lot to do with that. I’ve also had about 8 million conversations about the crash. If you keep talking about it, that seems to be the best way to work these things out.”
It’s not always so simple. David Carmichael, another survivor of Flight 1141, says the crash bothered him for a year or two, “but now it’s pretty well gone.”
Carmichael, 40, who lives in Monticello, Ark., says he still wonders why “everybody on my row died but me.”
“There’s a reason for me to be here,” he says. “I don’t know what it is, but I just feel I’ve got another purpose in life and I’ve got to hang around.”
But the salesman laughs at the notion that surviving a crash could make him feel invincible. So does fellow passenger Brian Griggers of Demopolis, Ala.
“I saw previews of the movie (showing the “Fearless” star as a post-crash daredevil) and I said, `Durn, I wonder what I would have done if that happened to me,”‘ says Griggers, 30, whose brother also survived the crash.
“But it sure didn’t. The only thing I do different now is that every time I hear a plane, I look at it. I never used to do that. And I used to sleep in the car when somebody else was driving, but now I can’t. I don’t trust anybody’s driving. I’m more skittish than I was before the crash.”
Griggers, who works in the timber business, says his wife, who was not on the flight, may be more troubled by the crash now than he is.
“I’ve told her everything, but she feels she can’t really understand everything and that bothers her,” she says. “And when plane crash movies are on, she can’t bear to watch them. They don’t bother me. I really want to see this new one.”
For Bernyce and Wilbur Hill, both in their 70s, the effects of the 1988 Delta crash will not go away. Wilbur Hill had lingering neck problems and Bernyce Hill suffered a compound leg fracture and a back injury that led to other health problems.
“I’ve never been the same since,” says Mrs. Hill, who lives in Buhl, Idaho. “Part of it is due to age and part to the crash. It took so much out of me.”
As a religious woman, she says, she is thankful “that I was spared. But I haven’t found the purpose yet. And I sure don’t feel invincible. I think you’d have to be a lot younger than I am to feel invincible.”
Dr. James Black, a Dallas psychiatrist who counseled survivors of Flight 1141 and other disasters, says Mrs. Hill is right.
“Most adolescents go through an invincible stage, but you grow out of it,” he says. “In the military we noted that 17-year-olds were more likely to be better soldiers. I know I can die and they don’t.”
The psychiatrist says he applauds Galloway’s “homespun philosophy” of pushing his luck, betting that his time on Earth is far from up and refusing to wallow in self-analysis.
“If it ain’t broke, I wouldn’t go fix it,” he says. “Some people don’t introspect much, and that may be all right.”
In treating several hundred cases of post-traumatic stress syndrome over the years, Black says he has never seen a patient driven to extremes like the character in “Fearless.” He has helped many overcome their fears, particularly the fear of getting back on a plane.
“My experience is that about a third of people do well, a third fly with some concerns and a third move out to West Texas and don’t even think about flying again,” he says.
Carmichael, Griggers and the Hills got back in the air pretty quickly.
The same day as the Delta crash, Carmichael won a trip to Hawaii through business connections “and I couldn’t sell it. So it meant getting on and off eight airplanes.”
When the Hills want to visit their grandchildren in Dallas, “it’s either three hours by air or three days by car,” Mrs. Hill says.
“I don’t think I’m nearly as frightened as some people I see flying. I just take something interesting to read on takeoffs and landings.”
It may not be fodder for a Hollywood blockbuster, but these days the Hills even make some of their fellow passengers feel a little invincible.
“If we talk about the crash, I’ve had people say, `Gee, we feel safe sitting next to you,’ ” Mrs. Hill says. “They think the odds are we won’t be in another crash.”
