MATT LAUER, co-host:
Let us begin this half-hour, though, with former
NASA
chief
Sean O'Keefe
. He's speaking out
for the first time
about how he survived that tragic
plane crash
that took the life of his friend, former
Senator Ted Stevens
. We're going to talk to Mr.
O'Keefe
in a moment, but first here's
Ann Curry
.
ANN CURRY reporting:
In
Alaska
, there's nothing unusual about taking a
plane
to go fishing. But on
August 9th
, a fishing trip turned into a story of searing loss and gritty survival. With an experienced pilot in the cockpit of a single-engine
float plane
, former
Senator Ted Stevens
, lobbyist friends and other fishing guests took off into cloudy skies. Among the eight passengers was former
NASA
chief and secretary of the
Navy Sean O'Keefe
, a longtime friend of the legendary
Stevens
, and
O'Keefe
's 19-year-old son
Kevin
. Mr.
SEAN O'KEEFE
(
Survived Plane Crash That Killed Former Senator Ted Stevens
): Everybody just kind of zoned out for a few minutes, waiting to land, and grabbed the poles.
CURRY:
People start unbuckling their seat belts?
Mr. O'KEEFE:
No. They were buckled the entire time. These are, you know, short flight.
CURRY:
Fifteen minutes
into the flight, the cabin was quiet, and then...
Mr. O'KEEFE:
With no notice, no evasive maneuvers, no nothing -- no turbulence, it just -- impact.
CURRY:
...the
plane
had crashed into a mountain.
Mr. O'KEEFE:
Abrupt -- very massive stops like that.
CURRY:
O'Keefe
blacked out, coming to in a state of hazy confusion.
Mr. O'KEEFE:
I spent the first few moments just spitting out shards of teeth. It was just surreal.
CURRY:
The configuration of the aircraft had changed so much that he was bewildered. So you're looking where you think your son is?
Mr. O'KEEFE:
Mm-hmm.
CURRY:
And he's not there?
Mr. O'KEEFE:
That's right
.
CURRY:
Sean
started shouting
Kevin
's name, but he couldn't get up to look around.
Mr. O'KEEFE:
Everything from my knees down was pinned down.
CURRY:
With a severely broken ankle, broken ribs, a dislocated hip, deep cuts to his head and a fractured neck,
Sean
could feel his body giving in.
Mr. O'KEEFE:
The prospect to go into shock, all that, was very much looming.
CURRY:
Then the magnitude of the disaster set in.
Mr. O'KEEFE:
Some folks you identified right away. Senator
Stevens
was sitting next to me. I felt for his pulse, I realized that my friend had
passed away
.
CURRY:
And
Sean
himself had to hold on, had to know if his son was still alive.
Mr. O'KEEFE:
I couldn't even imagine surviving through this experience if he were not OK.
LAUER:
Sean O'Keefe
, you know, we always say to our guests good to have you here. In your case, it takes on a different meaning. It's good to have you here.
Mr. O'KEEFE:
Well, thanks,
Matt.
Appreciate
it very much.
LAUER:
Before we get to the actual crash, I want to just talk about what must have seemed like a light-hearted exchange at the time between you and your wife before you took off on this fishing trip. She looked at you and she said...
Mr. O'KEEFE:
'Make sure you bring him back in one piece,' referring to my son
Kevin
.
LAUER:
Yeah.
Turned out
to be ironic.
Mr. O'KEEFE:
It was.
LAUER:
After that
plane
hit that mountainside, you went in and out of consciousness. And as you finally were able to become more and more alert, you talk about how the
plane
didn't look anything like it looked before the crash, and you were desperate to find your son. And you're yelling for
Kevin
, and then you realized, based on the fact that this
plane
has been jumbled, he's right in front of you. What was the condition he was in?
Mr. O'KEEFE:
Well, he was -- he was flying in the right seat next to the pilot. So he was behind the bulkhead on the front end of the cockpit of the aircraft. And when the impact occurred, apparently it moved to the left, the seat that he was in, and having been in harnesses -- were suspended from the overhead of the aircraft, he moved
just a little bit
to the left. So it was just a surreal look of him, you know, kind of hanging there.
LAUER:
Still in the harness?
Mr. O'KEEFE:
Still in the harness.
LAUER:
Not moving?
Mr. O'KEEFE:
Yes. And he was -- he was unconscious at the moment and came to a few minutes later. But...
LAUER:
Can you describe the moment when you heard him speak
for the first time
?
Mr. O'KEEFE:
Relief.
LAUER:
Yeah?
Mr. O'KEEFE:
It was -- I just -- I couldn't imagine how difficult this would have been to have persevered through it had he not been able to respond.
LAUER:
How bad were his injuries?
Mr. O'KEEFE:
Well, he dislocated a -- his right hip. He beat up his -- one of his legs, broke his jaw, so he was in, you know, the wires and all that for the last couple of months. Had a few lacerations here and there, but by and large, he had come through it without a major injury, so...
LAUER:
Sean
, I'm trying -- I'm trying to imagine the situation, you know. There are some of you in that
plane
who have survived and your amidst those who have not.
Mr. O'KEEFE:
Hm.
LAUER:
Including Senator
Stevens
and some others. You're right -- you end up right next to Senator
Stevens
. You talked about, to
Ann
, feeling for his pulse, and he didn't have one. You'd known him for over 30 years.
Mr. O'KEEFE:
Yeah. It was -- it, you know, the degree of separation between survival and not was a fraction of what you'd ever imagine. And it could have been anybody. You know, the randomness of this whole experience was such that you just -- any doubt you have about divine intervention goes away, that that was the only thing that separated.
LAUER:
I found something else heartbreaking. It was another friend of yours on that
plane
, a guy named
Bill Phillips
.
Mr. O'KEEFE:
Hm.
LAUER:
He was on the
plane
with his 13-year-old son, Willy.
Mr. O'KEEFE:
Mm-hmm.
LAUER:
Willy survived and he began yelling for his father. 'Where's, you know, where is my dad, where is my dad?'
Mr. O'KEEFE:
Mm-hmm.
LAUER:
You were able to know that his dad did not survive, and you had to be the one still in that wreckage to tell this 13-year-old boy that his father
passed away
.
Mr. O'KEEFE:
Well, Willy was incredibly -- he was an incredibly courageous, you know, man. I mean, he matured in an instant through this whole experience. There's, you know, no question about that.
LAUER:
What do you mean he matured in an instant?
Mr. O'KEEFE:
Well, he recognized the severity of what was going on and came to realize that our lives, those of us had survived it, were really
hanging in the balance
. He was the only one of
the four of us
who was mobile, who could actually walk around, moved outside the airplane, was able to try to look for some means of communications. He was an incredibly, incredibly mature kid, and...
LAUER:
You talk...
Mr. O'KEEFE:
LAUER:
You talk about the moments and the hours after the crash, and, I mean, you know, you're not
out of the woods
just because you've survived the impact.
Mr. O'KEEFE:
Yeah.
LAUER:
You
talk about it
being completely quiet except for the rain that was falling on the fuselage, and in some cases coming through the fuselage. And you started to think, 'We could have survived the crash but die of exposure.'
Mr. O'KEEFE:
Sure. Well, it's a common circumstance given the huge expanse of the state of
Alaska
and the wilderness there that many of the collisions, accidents, crashes, that occur, there may be survivors, but they may not return because it just takes so long to recover and see where that accident may have occurred. In this particular case we were 15,
20 minutes
away from the lodge we were staying at on our way to a camp that -- it was the same pattern we'd flown day in and day the last couple of days.
LAUER:
So you had to have hopes at least there'd be some flyovers.
Mr. O'KEEFE:
Exactly.
LAUER:
And actually Willy, by being able to move around outside that wreckage, when the planes did fly over, they did realize there were survivors, which...
Mr. O'KEEFE:
Exactly.
LAUER:
...made it more urgent for them to get down to you.
Mr. O'KEEFE:
Mm-hmm.
LAUER:
Describe your rescue.
Mr. O'KEEFE:
Well, it was several hours later because the weather conditions would not permit the search and rescue helicopters to come in until early the next morning. And seeing the recovery basket kind of come through the haze and the clouds to descend to us -- you could hear the helicopters overhead, but you couldn't see it -- was nothing short of a miraculous position to see, hey, we're about to
get out of here
. But it was several hours before we realized there was any way that anybody was going to spot us. And again, the courage that Willy demonstrated to be out there and really trying to find any way to communicate, any way to demonstrate we were still alive to any of the casual passersby that would have occurred on aircraft and helicopters saved us.
No doubt about it
.
LAUER:
You referred to it a couple of minutes ago,
Sean
, about the inches, but you can't go through something like this and not ask yourself why you lived...
Mr. O'KEEFE:
Yeah.
LAUER:
...and why others didn't live. How do you -- how do you go about answering the question?
Mr. O'KEEFE:
That's a -- that's a question I've contemplated so many times, and I suspect I'll probably never reach an answer on it because it just, you know, again, the randomness of this is so unbelievable. Senator
Stevens
was just right next to me. And by the time the impact had occurred, he had moved the full length of the aircraft to the left side of me. I moved forward and, you know, managed to avoid whatever the impact was that he encountered just by sheer, you know, circumstance. So it's -- and same with
Bill Phillips
, he was in the very back of the aircraft. It was a -- one of those cases where you wonder, and, look, I'll continue to wonder, I think, until my last breath, I'm sure.
LAUER:
That's one...
Mr. O'KEEFE:
And it was closer than I would have though at that time.
LAUER:
How's
Kevin
doing?
Mr. O'KEEFE:
Doing really well. He, you know, again, just the injuries he did sustain were ones that he was able to work through. He reported to school on first day of the fall semester at
Syracuse University
, ready to go to class, and he's in great shape. And the great advantage he has, he's 19 years old.
LAUER:
Yeah.
Mr. O'KEEFE:
You can come back from anything when you're 19.
LAUER:
Yeah, you do -- you do bounce back.
And I
know you went back to work on Monday. That had to be an awfully great event for you.
Sean
O'Keefe...
Mr. O'KEEFE:
It was.
LAUER:
...great to have you here. As I said in the beginning, we're happy you're with us.
Mr. O'KEEFE:
Thank you,
Matt.
Appreciate
it very much.
LAUER:
And you can see more of
Sean
's story on a special "Dateline," that's tonight at 9, 8
Central time
right here on
NBC
.
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