The crash of Flight 191

As an American Airlines DC-10 jet roared into the sky over O'Hare International Airport on this Friday afternoon, its left engine fell off.

[PDW]

Unfortunately, to this day there is no memorial to the victims of AA flight 191.

PDW
Chicago, IL

[Casey]

PDW, there is a memorial -- in the hearts of all of us who remember that day. Especially one person who changed travel plans at the last moment.

[VAG]

PDW,
the image of that disabled DC10 haunts me every time i board a plane and we have to bank. Perhaps because i'd taken the same flight out the day before.

[aicdfwm]

Does anyone know if it's allowed to access the crash site.I will never forget that day as long as i live.If you have any info could you please email me @[e-mail]

[JoeMama]

That was Senior ditch day at my high school and I was in Rosemont when it happened. I HEARD it! And then of course, nothing but sirens for hours and hours.

[remembering]

I was at work when the tragety happened, in blooningdale 10 or 15 miles west of the airport.
i will never forget seeing the mushroom cloud that was a result of this horrendous crash!
As it turned out 1 year later I dated a girl from desplaines and her father had a ticket for that flight. Now i didnt know these people when it happened, but I was told that he had missed his flight. As a result he lived, but for 3 or 4 hours thay all assumed that thay had lost there father. My heart goes out to all who were lost, and all who had lost loved ones on that fatefull day. My prayers will allways be with all the unfortunate souls. I believe if I may assume that casey was suposed to be on flight 191, it must be a terrable thing to realize just how easy it is to be at the end. you are also in my prayers and i am glad you were not on that flight.
GOD BLESS ALL WHO WERE LOST
AND ALL WHO HAD LOST

[SPO los angeles area]

hello,,,i was looking on the internet out of curiosity about the AA 191 '79 crash at O'Hare bound for LAX and noticed or can not find a victim crash names list and where they lived or a brief writeup about their lives(like what CNN did for the alaska airlines flt 291),,,,,, also i noticed how come there is no physical mermorial for these flt 191 victims,,,if you would notice(on the internet) alaska airlines flight 291 the one that crashed in 2000 outside LA off the Ventura County coast north of Malibu near Oxnard has a physical/permanent mermorial set up at a quiet beach next to a parking lot for those flt 291 victims(it was done really nice),,,,,, there should be a mermorial set up for the AA 191 victims and i'm sure other people would feel this way also....

[Anonymous]

Does anyone know why there is no victim list or physical memoria1?

[Todd]

I am not sure why there isn't a memorial. I think that's wrong. Some family members of the victims finally met together on the 25th anniversary back in 2004. I would love to see a memorial erected to commemorate the lives lost in this tragedy. Every time I pass by the site I think of what happened there, and my heart breaks for the victims and their families. I hope no one suffered.

[Steve Baird]

My Grandmother lived near the airport and saw the smoke as well as hearing the crash. I have read much about this terrible accident and the souls on that plane must have known right when they took off their fate. May they all rest in peace.
I'm very surprised there is no memorial, there should be.

[Vito]

My ex girlfriend's aunt and uncle were on that flight...her aunt didn't want to go. They were going to Ca. for his mother's birthday party. Very sad. I dated another girl a few years later and her aunt and uncle were on the delta flt 191 that crashed in Texas I believe. The uncle survived after he changed seats before the landing.

[Nelson22]

There have been two crashes of a flight 191. American lost a DC-10 on Friday May 25, 1979, and Delta lost an L1011 on Friday, August 2, 1985. Both planes were jumbo tri-jets, both crashed on Fridays, and both were bound for Los Angeles as the final destination of the flight. But check this out:

If you check the airport logs for the time of rotation, when the planes actually left their respective runways, you'll find that both planes rotated during the third minute after 3:00 (3:03) CDT. AA 191 left the runway in Chicago at 3:03 CDT, and DL 191 left the runway in Ft. Lauderdale at 4:03 EDT.

Is that strange or what?

[Ouija]

aicdfwm wrote:

Does anyone know if it's allowed to access the crash site.I will never forget that day as long as i live.If you have any info could you please email me @[e-mail]

Flight 191 crashed at 320 W. Touhy, Des Plaines, IL on May 25, 1979

The land is now an empty field owned by the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District and is fenced off.
The closest you can get to the site with Google Maps is the gated entrance at: " N 42° 00.725 W 087° 55.479 " (copy & paste in Google Maps search bar)

http://wikimapia.org/1498621/Crash-Site-of-Am...

[So Sad]

I was in 8th Grade when that happened. I remember riding the bus home from school and hearing all the sirens. Then the smoke.

I grew up in Itasca. We were in the "flight path".

I used to have dreams that planes crashed aross the street from out house. Crazy.

[dianna]

PDW wrote:

Unfortunately, to this day there is no memorial to the victims of AA flight 191.
PDW
Chicago, IL

Yes, agreed, did you lose a family member? I did. I see you live in Santa Ana, I live in Newport Beach - [e-mail]

[Voice of reason]

I don't why there isn't specifically a "memorial", but I know there should not be any more.

1. I can give full sympathy to the victims and their families, but why does the fact they all died in one pile together make it memorial worthy compared to the family who died in a car crash a mile away, or the man who died of malpractice in a nearby hospital, or the child who drowned accidentally in a pool at the YMCA nearby? All deaths, all accidental, all tragic. Why does the spectacular news story get a monument?
2. We CAN'T just build memorials all over the place, eventually you'll be tripping over them like telephone poles.
3. Take your personal tragedy, and donate some money or time to a charity in the name of the victim. Cemeteries were created to honor our losses, and they do that perfectly. In fact, if a memorial is necessary, put it in an available cemetery, that would appropriate.

[Jim in Chicago]

My understanding and recollection is that there is a memorial but in the L.A. area. The majority of those whose bodies and body parts that were not identified were from the L.A. area.

[dianna]

I am a family member of a victim, would like to reconnect with anyone who was at the 25th anniversary memorial in 2004. thanks dianna email: [e-mail]

[Joy]

dianna wrote:

I am a family member of a victim, would like to reconnect with anyone who was at the 25th anniversary memorial in 2004. thanks dianna email: [e-mail]

Dianna, my brother and I lost our parents in the crash, we were not at the memorial but live in Los Angeles and would love to connect sometime. That goes for anyone that lives here. We will also be in Chicago for the 30th anniversary. We used to live in Woodstock so we thought it would be a good time to go back. Does anyone know if anything will be going on at the airport?

[Joy]

Todd wrote:

I am not sure why there isn't a memorial. I think that's wrong. Some family members of the victims finally met together on the 25th anniversary back in 2004. I would love to see a memorial erected to commemorate the lives lost in this tragedy. Every time I pass by the site I think of what happened there, and my heart breaks for the victims and their families. I hope no one suffered.

Thank you Todd. That means a lot.
We were so sad to miss the memorial. We didn't know about it until the day of and were still in Los Angeles. However I happened to be flying back east on the 26th through O'Hare ironically enough, and was able to go to the chapel and see the flowers.