Family, friends grieve,
search for answers
'I got the feeling they were withholding something,' pilot's mother says
|
By Russell Carollo
"She went there every morning. She sat out a folding chair and an umbrella and sat there with her premed book and studied," Edward McNally said. "She was there between 8 to 10 hours a day."
Dayton Daily News
For days after the funeral, P.J. McShane, Lt. Cmdr. Randall E. McNally II's fiancee, was at his gravesite hour after hour, sitting in a lawn chair under an umbrella to keep the sun off of her as she studied for her final college exams. She told friends she sometimes wanted to crawl into the grave to be with him.
MCNALLY FAMILY PHOTO
P.J. MCSHANE AND Lt. Cmdr. Randall E. McNally II were engaged to be married on June 18, 1994. Instead, McShane brought some friends to a spot alongside Lake Michigan and held a ceremony to celebrate her love for her fiance who had died.
"It was a mass. She planted a tree for the spirit of their marriage. We all had lunch afterward," said Sheila McNally-Hoy, McNally's sister. "It just seemed like the right thing to do at the time."
It was one of several ceremonies the family held following McNally's death.
"When he was lost, everyone I talked to felt like they lost their best friend," McNally-Hoy said. "The reason they felt that way was because when Rand walked into a room, he let you know that he knew that your were there."
In a eulogy to his brother, Edward McNally, wrote:
"Rand lived several lifetimes. He had the love of his life, a spectacular education, work so fulfilling he would have done it for free, and the blessing of dying quickly, in the line of duty, doing something he truly loved."
"He was handsome, dashing, courageous . . . Track star. Platoon leader, born on an Air Force base. They say that Rand was born to run, born to fly, born to lead."
"My brother knew that each of us is special, and he made us feel that way, because every life has a dream and every life is important, because it touches so many other lives."
At the request of the Dayton Daily News, Rear Admiral Frank M. "Skip" Dirren Jr., commander of the Naval Safety Center in Norfolk, Va., reviewed records from McNally's crash. Neither of the two investigations the Navy conducted, including the secret safety investigation, identified a cause, he said.
In a written response, the safety center acknowledged that the stabilizer augmentor -- an electronic system that enables the pilot to better operate the plane's most critical flight control systems -- was never found.
"Did it fail on the mishap flight?" the written response says. "Don't know. Apparently the unit was not found. That may have been one of the reasons that the (cause of the) mishap was designated as undetermined."
MCNALLY FAMILY PHOTO
RAND MCNALLY (LEFT) and his brother Edward McNally pose with Texas Gov. George W. Bush in 1980. Edward was a speech writer for President George Bush.
|
"I got the feeling they were withholding something," said McNally's mother, Margaret McNally.
Dr. Randall E. McNally, McNally's father, said he, too, wanted answers.
"When you lose a child, it's almost better if you went," he said. "It's tormenting."
"The whole family thought it was just so tragic because Randall was just so highly thought of," said Regina Crane of Springboro, a distant cousin of McNally's. "He was just a wonderful person."
What's made it even harder for his family and friends to accept is the loss of a man at the height of an extraordinary life. And what is equally hard for them to accept is that there are so few answers about how he died.
"As far as answers, we all know Rand is still watching us," said McNally's sister, Sheila McNally- Hoy.
At the end of the eulogy, Edward McNally wrote:
"And so we, too, say goodbye, with a lump in our throats . . . God bless you Rand and watch over us . . . Blue skies and fair seas, little brother. Blue skies and fair seas."
Main story:
Problems can exist years before fixes implemented
Sea Knight has history of hydraulic woes