Connection to the Past

The Dallas Morning News obituaries this week announced that Suzie Humphreys has died at age 87. May she rest in peace. For those of us who were around during the late 60s through 70s and later, Suzie was a television and radio personality. She was probably best remembered as Ron Chapman’s remote sidekick on his popular morning program on radio station KVIL. Chapman and his crew catered to an audience primarily of the young urban professionals, then known as “yuppies,” many of whom were reformed hippies. In addition to playing contemporary pop music, Chapman fielded phone calls and exchanged banter with listeners. Those calls rarely involved politics, except when some politician did or said something ridiculous or otherwise humorous. Such comments were not hostile or venomous like today’s social media, but many were followed by a “what’s this world coming to” jingle. This, of course, was an age in which there were only line-land telephones. 
	Suzie’s role was making traffic reports, first from the KVIL helicopter and later from the “Yellowvan” that roamed the streets. She and Chapman engaged in a lot of humorous and interesting banter interspersed with reports of jams on the freeways and the occasional wreck. Suzie’s transition from the sky occurred only after her escape from death. One morning in the late spring, while pregnant, Suzie, intrepid as ever, flew and made her reports and conversation with Chapman. That day’s weather was turbulent, some gusts over 25 MPH. Suffering from nausea brought about by her morning sickness and the rough air, Suzie asked the pilot to land and let her out. He did and took off again. After several minutes, the KVIL helicopter crashed, killing the pilot and destroying the aircraft. After that harrowing brush with death, Suzie, Chapman, and KVIL management decided that it was prudent that she continue her career on the ground — she did and continued until Chapman’s show ended and he went to another station.
	I had a somewhat minor connection with that event.  The day of the KVIL helicopter crash I was a detective with the Dallas Police Department’s special investigations unit, a group of officers that investigated organized property crimes and anything else the chief assigned. At the time there was a rash of burglaries of wealthy homes in North Dallas. One of the burglars had been arrested, and probably in hopes of some leniency, told us that he and his partner in crime had stolen a safe from a victim’s house. They could not open the safe and it was too heavy and bulky to carry very far. They left it on the side of one of the numerous creeks that ran through the neighborhoods in North Dallas. We caught one of the burglars and when interrogated he told us about the safe and roughly where they left it. Rather than search on the ground that day, I volunteered to ride in a police helicopter to look for the safe along the creeks. It did not take long to spot and we called officers on the ground to retrieve it. On the way back to the airport in southwest Dallas, we ran into the same weather Suzie and their pilot were experiencing. Susceptible to motion sickness myself, I thought about asking the pilot to put down, but valor rather than discretion took over and I toughed it out. Later, after hearing about the helicopter Suzie had been in crashing, I thought about what could have happened to me. It has taken the grim reaper another forty-eight years to claim Suzie. Hope it takes him longer to harvest me.