Chapter 1: What event sparked the Godfrey family's tragic journey?
It's just after 3 p.m. on Saturday, March the 2nd, 1974. In the Colorado Rockies, about 12 miles south of the town of Glenwood Springs, skiers carve through freshly groomed snow at the Sunlight Mountain Ski Area. Despite the promise of its name, Sunlight Mountain shivers today beneath dishwater grey clouds. The temperature hovers around freezing.
A bitter wind rolls in, blowing fine, powdery spindrift across the slopes. Not that the weather has kept the visitors away. Schools have just broken up for spring break, and between dark ranks of spruce and aspen, hundreds weave their way downhill, squeezing in the last runs of the afternoon. Overhead, chairlifts stretch across the slopes like power lines.
Seated in one, their skis dangling over the edge, are nine-year-old Danny Schaefer and his older brother David. As the chairlift clanks along, ferrying its passengers up the mountain, Danny gazes out over the tops of the evergreens. The Schaeffers arrived from Denver early today for a weekend ski trip, and so far it's been a blast.
As they near the end of the lift, Danny hears something in the distance. A faint, high-pitched whine. He squints across the valley, and there, barely visible against the white mountainside rising behind it, is a tiny propeller plane. Immediately, it's clear that something isn't right. The plane shudders in the air as if running on fumes. And what's it doing flying so close to the mountain?
When the chairlift deposits them at the top of the run, Danny skis to a lookout spot and peers in the direction of the aircraft.
He'd seen the plane while he was on the chairlift. So as he got off the chairlift, he quickly skied to a spot on the side of the run where he could have a better view of it.
Danny watches as the aircraft turns suddenly, its left wing dropping low as it attempts to fly over a snowy, forested ridgeline. Then, as if in slow motion, the plane's wing appears to clip the top of a tree before it drops and vanishes behind the ridge in a cloud of smoke. Danny stares, his pulse quickening. Hoping he wasn't the only witness, he turns to his brother.
Unfortunately, his brother was not looking at the time. So when he said, did you see that? He said, no, I didn't see anything.
Later, when they rejoin their parents on the slopes, Danny tells his dad about what he saw. But he can't get him to take his story seriously.
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Chapter 2: How did the Godfrey family prepare for their flight to Aspen?
In a well-to-do suburb of Houston, Texas, inside a large house on a quiet tree-lined street, a family of seven is at home finishing dinner. Drop in on this family most evenings and you'll find a home bustling with noise and activity. But tonight the atmosphere is even livelier than usual, because tomorrow the Godfreys leave for Aspen, the upscale ski resort in the mountains of Colorado.
Once the dishes have been cleared away, eight-year-old Andy scampers upstairs to his bedroom. Of all the Godfrey's, no one is more excited for the coming week. This is just the second year he's been old enough to go on the annual skiing trip, and he can't wait.
I had gone the year before at the age of seven. Before that, I would be left behind with my grandparents because I was just too young to go on the family trip. So I had gone the year before in 1973, probably my first time skiing. I was extremely excited to learn how to ski. So when March of 1974 rolled around, I was extremely excited again.
Andy is the second youngest of five. The birth of his sister Paula, 18 months ago, means he's no longer the baby of the family. But there's still quite a gap between him and his eldest siblings, 15-year-old Ellen and 14-year-old Billy.
My older brother Billy was, you know, I'd say he sort of ruled the roost. I was just the youngest brother of three, and so I was intimidated by him. He was much bigger and stronger. So, you know, stay out of his room, those kind of things.
Hurrying past Billy's off-limits teenage sanctum, Andy pushes open the door of his own bedroom, which he shares with another brother, 11-year-old Mark.
I'd say he was a little bit more quiet than I was, not as quite as outgoing. Part of that might be the dynamic of being a middle child where you're, you know, I don't know, not as expressive. And I'm three and a half years younger than Mark. So for a while there, I was the youngest of four. So I was pretty rambunctious and always getting into things.
You might say that Mark is more like his mother and Andy's more like their father in some aspects of their personality. I think that we're, you know, a kind of a good yin and yang to each other.
For Mark, a shy middle child in a family of big personalities, it hasn't always been easy to figure out where he fits within that ecosystem. But lately things have started to fall into place.
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Chapter 3: What went wrong during the descent of the aircraft?
So he said, fine, I'll sit in the co-pilot seat when we take off and you can sit there when we land. And I was like, okay, deal. So I ended up going and sitting in the back left seat of the airplane and Mark was in the back right seat.
Satisfied with his negotiating, Andy buckles in next to Mark at the back of the plane. A few moments later, the pilot sparks the engines, the propellers splutter into life, and as they accelerate down the runway, the fuselage rattling and shuddering, Mark shifts nervously in his seat. A shadow of unease passes over his face.
I remember being on the plane, looking around the plane. I remember this memory very vividly and thinking something could happen to the plane and we're all together and that would not be good. And I remember putting that out of my brain and saying, well, that's not going to happen. We're all together. Everything's going to be fine. Mark, don't worry about that.
Soon they reach cruising altitude, the aircraft leveling just below the clouds. Mark glances around at the smiling, carefree faces of his family and manages at last to relax.
There was a lot of, you know, energy, excitement. There were a lot of snacks on board. So we were, you know, eating whatever snacks were available. So it was a carefree atmosphere with kind of no worries or concerns.
It's about three hours later. So far the flight has been smooth and uneventful. The pilot has flown them over central Texas and the northwest corner of New Mexico before crossing into Colorado, pointing out sites of interest along the way.
The weather has been clear, providing those on board with magnificent views of the landscape below, the topography shifting from wide open prairie land to high desert plains, and finally to the snow-flecked foothills of the Rockies. In the cockpit, the pilot reduces their speed and eases the controls into a gentle descent towards Aspen.
A few minutes later, they enter a layer of dense, low-hanging cloud. At this stage, heavy turbulence might cause some of the passengers to experience a sudden sinking feeling in the pit of their stomachs. Realizing they must nearly be there, Andy unbuckles his seatbelt and makes his way unsteadily up the aisle. It's time for Billy to uphold his end of the bargain.
I walked up to the front and I said, Billy, we're almost in Aspen. It's my turn to land, to sit there. And he said, no, for whatever reason, maybe he was nervous because it was so bumpy and getting kind of scary. He said, go back to your seat. So I went back to my seat.
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Chapter 4: What were the immediate consequences of the plane crash?
Obviously, it was the other way around. The plane was falling very quickly to the ground, but I saw trees coming up at a very rapid pace up to the window.
The plane banks sharply. Somewhere down below, alpine pistes weave through the trees. Skiers and hikers are enjoying themselves, making the most of the last decent snow of the season, unaware that just beyond a ridge to the west, something terrible is unfolding in the frozen air.
I heard the jet engines, the turboprop engines,
whining at a very high pitch and the last thing i remember is my mother screaming oh my god we're gonna crash at approximately 3 30 p.m as the pilot tries to maneuver the aircraft over an alpine ridge the slanting left wing shears the top of an 100 foot spruce tree which is all it takes
I remember kind of the point of impact where you just hear sounds and noises and violent deceleration, a crash, just that moment where I black out.
It was just the tearing sound of ripping through the trees. And then I can remember the impact sort of like a luge, you know, hitting the snow and sliding. And then I think we must have hit one final tree to come to rest. And that's when I was probably thrown forward and knocked unconscious.
It is Saturday, March the 2nd, 1974. A few miles south of Glenwood Springs, Colorado, the mountains are bound tightly by a deadening layer of snow and frost. Millions of spruce trees, twisted and bare, stand huddled against the landscape like shivering battalions, backs bent from countless harsh winters. Just one valley over, the lights of a bustling ski resort glow invitingly.
But this side of the mountain remains obscured, shrouded in a crepuscular gloom. The silence is deafening, the stillness absolute. Early this afternoon, a sound threatened to disturb the quiet, a muffled whomp, accompanied by a shrill metallic rending that reverberated fleetingly in the thin alpine air before it was snuffed out, swallowed by the snow.
But the source of the sound did leave a trace. Just below the crest of a tree-lined ridge, something has gouged a ragged path through the pines, leaving a trail of broken branches and a scattering of loose debris. The path leads downhill about a hundred feet before arriving at a pile of hideously compacted metal, barely recognizable as the fuselage of an airplane.
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Chapter 5: How did Andy and Mark survive after the crash?
Mark has just started middle school. Less than 24 hours ago, they were being tucked in, having a lullaby sung to them. And now, here they are, in the cold and the dark, with everything they know upended. Paralyzed by fear, it's only natural that they grasp for familiarity. And so, as night falls around them, the brothers do what they've always done when the sun goes down.
They close their eyes and eventually drift off to sleep. It's morning. The sky above the wreckage is a pole of white. A few miles away, in Glenwood Springs, skiers anxiously await weather updates, as major blizzard warnings threaten the closure of certain runs. Inside the fuselage, a grey translucence leaks through the cracks in the ruptured metal.
Andy and Mark, their woolen jumpers stiff with frost, open their eyes to the daylight and peer around.
Andy and I slowly became aware of our surroundings. Our mother was trapped, I think, very close to me, if not, you know, partly on top of me with broken skis and broken plane parts and things like that. So that is a tough memory to have. I don't think we had identified any other family members in the general vicinity of us that I can recall.
Everything is a crumpled mess. Sharp, metallic, angular. Mark can't free his legs from whatever's trapping them, and if he moves his head, it scrapes the bottom of the collapsed roof. He is stuck, entombed in debris. For Andy, who wasn't buckled in when the plane crashed, he is able to move around a bit more.
At one stage, he even leaves the fuselage, clambering through a jagged hole in the side of the plane and emerging into a snowy wasteland enclosed by towering evergreens.
I do remember stepping outside the airplane just to sort of see if I could walk away or something. And the snow was so deep, that scared me, so I hopped right back in.
As soon as Andy steps outside, his mother's instructions come back to him.
I'm sure her words were sort of echoing, you know, don't leave the airplane and conserve the food and take care of your brother.
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Chapter 6: What challenges did the brothers face in the aftermath?
Soon enough, night falls for the second time.
The first night was one thing, but to have to go through that 24 hours later was probably kind of the low for us.
The sound of the search planes fades to silence. Once again, Mark and Andy are left with nothing but the sound of their own shivering breaths. The temperature, already at freezing, plummets. The fresh snow that has fallen onto the crash site hardens like setting cement, sealing the fuselage in a thick, icy carapace.
The cold leaches into their bones, slowly freezing the tissue, cutting off the blood to their toes and fingers. Frostbite is killing them from the inside out. And yet they still manage to stave off despair.
That kind of strength, we all wonder if we have it. And I don't think you ever get the answer to that question until you're put into the situation. But I think we all have it when we really need to. It's just a basic human survival mechanism that we're all born with. That put in the worst situation, we will perform at our best.
The hours pile up, the night deepening. At some stage, the brothers shut their eyes and managed to fall asleep once more.
The next morning waking up, it was a beautiful day. So that probably added some optimism that they're going to find us today. The weather's beautiful.
It's Monday morning. A shaft of sunlight flares at the torn edge of the half-buried fuselage, piercing the gloomy interior. Reaching out an arm, Andy can feel the sun warming his frozen skin. He eats a handful of snow to quench his raging thirst. While Andy is up and moving, Mark's eyes are still closed. His skin is ghostly pale. The effort of staying alive is becoming intolerable.
But then his senses prick.
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Chapter 7: How did the brothers cope with their traumatic experience?
How old am I? What's my name? Where do I live? What grade am I in? Do you know where you are now? They weren't answering questions that I was asking them, like, where's my mom and dad? Where's my brother and sister? So then I slowly started realizing, you know, that what Andy and I Maybe thought was the hallucination was actually something in real life.
Due to the different severity levels of their injuries, the brothers are now separated. Mark wheeled into intensive care where he'll be put on life support while Andy receives treatment for his frostbitten feet. That evening, as he lies swaddled in bandages, Andy learns the fate of his mom, dad, brother, and sister.
I didn't have a big reaction. And maybe I was still kind of in shock or whatever. But I remember learning later that the reporter said, well, he obviously doesn't realize what's happened. Otherwise, he would be reacting differently. And to this day, I feel that the whole accident sort of numbed my feelings a little bit.
And it seems like I cry at different times now that, you know, don't cry in things that are really, really sad. And I do cry in things that maybe aren't sad. So maybe something changed in me then, but that's definitely how it went down that first night.
and he will stay in hospital for a month, eventually losing several toes to frostbite. Mark's journey to recovery is much longer and more complex. He will spend three months in hospital, as the medics work to stave off the spread of infection. Ultimately, doctors will have no choice but to amputate. He will lose his left foot and his right leg two inches below the knee.
During his long stay in hospital, drifting in and out of a medication-induced haze, Mark slowly comes to terms with the crushing hand he has been dealt.
God had thrown me two, you know, very, very big curveballs. One was the loss of my family. And then secondly, you know, the more time I spent in the hospital, the more I realized how much my life was going to be completely different than what my prior life had been.
So not only had I lost my parents, but now I was going to be leaving the hospital as a severely disabled 11-year-old boy in a wheelchair.
After leaving the hospital, Mark and Andy are taken in by their aunt and uncle, the Schumackers, who live in Aspen. Soon, little Paula, who has been staying with their grandparents back in Houston, comes to join them. And so, orphaned and uprooted, the surviving Godfrey children must embark on the next chapter of their lives.
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Chapter 8: What legacy did the Godfrey brothers create from their story?
I wonder if that could be a potential subject for a documentary. And so I think after Andy's article came out, Andy and John started talking and they approached me about maybe making a documentary.
Mark is hesitant at first. But in the end, he agrees to take part in the documentary.
It's not something Mark and I were trying to do, but inadvertently, the process of making our film helped both Mark and I heal, especially Mark. He really was able to open up, talk about how the accident affected him and how he grew through this process of making a film and sharing the story.
The film's impact continues to grow in myriad, unexpected ways. It catches the attention of a world-renowned psychiatrist who contacts the brothers and suggests they establish a foundation to help other survivors process trauma through the act of making short films. Soon, the Godfrey Foundation for Cinema Therapy is born, and it's still actively helping people today.
As stated on the website, the foundation dedicates its work to the memory of those members of the Godfrey family who died so tragically, William, Deneen, Ellen, and Billy. Looking back on the making of the documentary, Mark recalls many cathartic moments, but one stands out.
We walked up to the crash site with one of the rescuers, and that was such a powerful moment with him. He said something along the lines of, you don't get over it, you just kind of get through it. And I think that's very accurate. And again, you know, it took Andy and I decades to kind of get through it. So I find myself counseling other people that are going through rough times.
You're in a storm right now, but the weather will clear and things will get better. But you just got to grind it out and you got to just live each day at a time. But just recognize that you're in a storm right now and kind of lean on your faith. And no one knows what's going to happen, but you'll slowly get through it and life goes on.
Next time, we meet saturation diver Richard Bradley. In 2011, Richard is 130 feet underwater in the Northwest Shelf, Australia's largest area of oceanic oil and gas extraction. He's performing some routine cleaning when he feels a sudden pain in his left forearm.
It was what I imagined being shot would be like. I took the full blast off from the nozzle at point blank into my forearm.
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