It was a day many dreaded. On Thursday, May 12, 1988, the last-period P.E. students at Bishop O’Connell High School had to run a timed mile on the track. If they were too slow, the teachers would make them do it again later.
Sophomore Rosemary Kennedy (née Pellegrino) was lined up in front, determined to finish fast. She and her pal Lori Haralampus were running shoulder to shoulder down the straightaway when suddenly Lori shoved Rosemary to the ground.
It took a moment before Rosemary registered two things: First, a small plane had crashed onto the field, its landing gear and wing missing her by inches. Second, Lori’s quick action had probably saved her from serious injury or worse. “It was so close,” says Kennedy, who now lives in Manassas. “I can still see it when I close my eyes. After the plane went over us, it hit the bottom part of the field before it went back up, bounced and [crashed into] the fence.”
That morning, a single-engine Piper Cherokee with two occupants, pilot Ed Sanchez and passenger Dick Sheeringa, had departed from Toronto, Ontario, en route to Raleigh, North Carolina. Sanchez had planned to refuel at what was then Washington National Airport, but the plane’s instrumentation was faulty, indicating they had more fuel than they did.
At 2:24 p.m., Sanchez radioed air traffic control that they were out of gas and would need to make an emergency landing. The pilot aimed to set the plane down on an empty field next to the school, but the aircraft descended too quickly, and he settled on the football field, maneuvering around 100 or so kids before nosing into an embankment and chain-link fence.
While P.E. teachers gathered students together on the field, a school official inside the building announced that a plane had crashed and that students were to stay in their classrooms. That didn’t stop some from climbing out windows to get a better view.
Remarkably, no students or teachers were injured, and the pilot and passenger escaped with only cuts and bruises.
Their memories have no doubt lasted longer than those minor bumps and scrapes.
“Every now and then, if I see a plane that looks like it’s oddly coming down out of the sky, I’m like, ‘Let’s move out of the way,’ ” Kennedy says. “I will keep my eye on it.”