The Last Flight: Grieving, moving forward
Chapter 1: Race of their lives
The pilot flew a twin-engine airplane carrying two coaches, a student athletic trainer, three runners and a new trophy.
The team had hoped, on its best day, to get fifth place at the NCAA Cross Country Championship meet in Milwaukee. But something very unexpected happened on Nov. 25, 1985, to the Iowa State women’s team on a course newly plowed of snow.
“We just kind of ran the race of our lives,” ISU runner Bonnie Sons said.
AUDIO: Bonnie Sons talks about the NCAA race
That she was not on the airplane with her teammates lugging that trophy is a question of chance or providence that she has lived with for 30 years. Sons boarded another of the three team planes, while others stayed behind to accept the award.
The air was thick with fog and an icy drizzle as the day turned to late afternoon. The airplanes were diverted from Ames to land at the Des Moines airport. Runners’ parents navigated icy roads home from Wisconsin. A brother was in choir practice. A high school friend was jogging. Des Moines residents were in their homes preparing dinner or watching “Cannonball Run” on television.
Flying above, with seven souls on board, one of the planes suddenly struggled.
“Des Moines, 589,” pilot Burton Watkins radioed to air traffic controllers at 5:41 p.m., “I seem to have some real trouble here, ah, I’m, ah, I’m in severe turbulence.”
A global approach
The team was like a family.
ISU coach Ron Renko talked nonstop and moved fast, running alongside his team while wearing a bobble hat, its yarn ball bouncing with each step.
He was single and lived and breathed running and his Christian faith. He had found spiritual peace, but his pursuit of knowledge was insatiable.
Former runners describe him as a caring person, a psychologist, nutritionist and, if need be, a master of topography.
Months before a national meet in 1981, Renko acquired a map of the course in Pocatello, Idaho. It was exceptionally hilly, but he fitted the Cyclones with a training strategy that helped them win this precursor to the NCAA championships.
“Iowa is not renowned for its steep, long hills,” former Cyclone runner Cathy Lynham wrote in an email. “So in preparation we did sessions where we would run hard to the base of the hill at Veenker Golf Course (in Ames). Then, at maximum fatigue, take on the hill.
“It worked.”
AUDIO: Bonnie Sons talks describes the impact of Coach Renko
Renko also developed an edge in recruiting by bringing in talented prospects from Europe.
Most of them had never heard of Ames, especially in the pre-Internet age. Lynham, who graduated from Iowa State in the spring of 1985, grew up in Scotland.
“Ron made the transition so easy for me and became not only my coach, but my good friend,” Lynham said. “One time he drove up to the Minneapolis airport to pick me up. I got off my flight expecting to take the bus to Ames, but Ron was waiting for me at baggage reclaim.”
Other international recruits followed Lynham, including Julie Rose, a highly touted recruit from Britain.
“She was a tell-it-like-it-is type of person,” Sons said of Rose. “Very much a sweetheart, but she was not afraid to tell you what she was thinking. No one would train tougher than Julie. She was tough as nails.”
Rose broke from the pack when it came to diet. She preferred steak to salad.
“She had a wicked sense of humor, compassion for others and a cheeky smile,” Lynham recalled. “Overall, she had an appetite for life.”
Sue Baxter arrived from England with a different temperament.
“Very sweet, mild mannered,” Sons said. “Didn’t make any waves. She just did what she was told. Did her thing. Just very much a team player.”
Sons grew up in the Minneapolis area, but quickly blended in with all the runners, which also included fellow Minnesotan Jill Slettedahl.
“Bonnie was our No. 1 runner,” said Tami (Colby) Prescott, who came to ISU from Boone and was a freshman runner. “She was our leader, but she wasn’t a domineering type. She cared about everyone on the team.”
Training, bonding
The Iowans on the team added much to this caring family.
Sheryl Maahs had a mop of curly hair bouncing above her tiny 5-foot-2, 100-pound frame when she ran. She had a big, toothy smile, but behind it was a fiery, competitive spirit.
When Maahs begged to play the piano as a child, her parents relented, even though they recognized it wasn’t her talent. She was so determined, she wrote her own song for a recital. When her parents questioned whether she should go to prom with an older date as a freshman, she made her own prom dress, and it became too hard to say no.
“Once she had an idea, she would just go forward,” said her father, Earl Maahs, of Spirit Lake.
Spirit Lake didn’t even have a girls cross country team until Sheryl Maahs pushed for it. She enlisted enough friends to put together a team. Maahs qualified for the state meet and finished in the top 10.
She helped her father start running after he gained weight when he quit smoking, and they competed in half marathons and 10-kilometer races.
“She crushed me,” Earl Maahs said.
One day, Sheryl competed in a meet in Estherville, 15 miles down the road from Spirit Lake. When the meet was over, she announced to her family that she was just going to run home. No big proclamation, no fancy gear. She just ran and ran.
“She ran home and drank a bottle of pickle juice,” marveled brother Ron Maahs of Johnston.
Renko hadn’t even heard of this pint-sized runner from an unknown running school until he watched her compete at the state meet while scouting another runner.
She quickly shined at ISU. Ron Maahs, who joined his sister at Iowa State a year later, realized it when he a saw big photograph of her in the Iowa State Daily student newspaper. The headline read: “Maah-velous.”
She wasn’t overjoyed with the attention, Ron said. She was more concerned that the photograph showed her wearing a wristwatch, a no-no on Renko’s team. The rule-follower and 4.0 student was so dedicated to doing what was right that she often checked in on her brother at his fraternity, urging him to go with her to church or study. They shared a burgundy 1979 Oldsmobile ’98 to get around town.
One time, after much lobbying, he convinced his sister to buy him and a buddy beer. She was beyond worried but finally gave in, emerging from the convenience store with a mischievous grin — and a six-pack to split between two college men.
Maahs often battled injuries, but always had a Tootsie Pop ready for any teammate who needed cheering up.
That’s what Prescott remembers today. She joined Maahs and Charlene (Letzring) Elyea of Goose Lake as home-state Iowans who were vital to a close team.
“We cared about each other,” said Prescott, of Urbandale.
She often thinks of how they bonded before that 1985 season.
The coach set up a preseason training camp in Wisconsin. The first two days were at a comfortable rented house, jogging around a pristine lake, the way marked with the signature he put on many of his correspondences — a pony-tailed stick figure “runner girl.”
The next days were at a more rustic cabin, running on logging roads. The progressively tough training camp concluded by tent camping on a cement pad with no showers or bathrooms, chopping wood, swatting bugs and running.
“Everything he did had a plan and a purpose,” Prescott said.
The season reached a high point nine days before the national meet. The Cyclones pulled off a win in the District 5 meet in Oklahoma, which qualified the team for the nationals. Prescott has a large framed photograph of the team taken that day after they ran through the mud to victory.
She looked at it again recently and saw Letzring’s hand reaching across to hold the wrist of Sheryl Maahs, another sign of their comfort and care for each other.
“I’ve never noticed that before,” she whispered.
Triumph and trouble
A top-five finish at the 1985 NCAA national meet seemed far-fetched.
Renko realized that running as a tight pack was pivotal. Instead of following a lead runner, the Cyclones were taught to stay close together and feed off one another. Never was his emphasis of teamwork more evident.
“That was the beauty of Ron,” Sons said. “His whole focus was minimizing the time spread between our first finisher and our fifth finisher, even our sixth finisher. Everybody thinks it’s that top runner who is most important, and that’s not true in cross country.”
It was a cold day on Nov. 25. Snow had just been removed from parts of the course.
Student trainer Stephanie Streit was so determined to be there she came on her own after taking a test. She’d become well known among the runners, who were often battling nagging injuries.
Streit had long blond hair that she would flip to the side. But her girlish gesture belied her toughness. A star athlete and musician in Hawarden, Ia., she had gone to Iowa State for pre-med.
“Stephanie was bossy. Always,” said her high school best friend, Margaret Schiefen, of Lincoln, Neb. “Thing is, she always knew what the right thing was, and wasn’t afraid to share if she thought I wasn’t doing it. That is partly why she was so successful.”
The runners that day debated on whether to run with tights. Some did; some didn’t. But when the race started, it didn’t matter. Magic was happening on the course.
Sons placed 25th overall in a time of 16 minutes and 59.30 seconds. Jill Slettedahl was just 6 seconds behind Sons, at 17:05.40, followed by Baxter, 17:07.30; Rose, 17:17.20; Maahs, 17:20.20; and Colby, 17:24.20.
The Cyclones’ top six runners finished within 25 seconds of each other over 5,000 meters, all placing among the top 32 in the team scoring. They collectively had run the race of their lives. The beauty of the day, Sons said, was that their greatest accomplishment rested not on individual glory, but on the shared effort of the team.
They were cooling down when assistant coach Pat Moynihan approached the group and told them they better get over to the award presentation: They had finished second in the nation to Wisconsin.
They were shocked, but there was little time for celebration.
Three airplanes, owned and operated by Iowa State, waited to take off. They had to be back because, as soon as they returned from Milwaukee, the men’s basketball team was scheduled to use the planes to fly to Illinois State in Normal, Ill.
Someone needed to pick up the trophy, though, so coaches Renko and Moynihan, runners Maahs, Rose and Baxter and trainer Streit stayed behind.
Not a day goes by that their teammates don’t think about how the plane was boarded and by whom. Letzring and Slettedahl went home with their parents, as the remaining women and the men’s team filled the planes.
Streit was originally going to fly back commercially, since she came separately, but chose to go home with the jubilant team.
“She wasn’t supposed to be on that plane,” Schiefen said.
Bonnie Sons was. She had placed her travel bag on the third plane, when she saw a pilot she knew. Sons had gotten her pilot’s license, and she knew him from flight training. Sons asked if she could fly in the right-hand seat with him and wear the headset to listen to radio interaction.
So Sons removed her bag from the third plane, put it on the second and jumped aboard.
AUDIO: Bonnie Sons talks about changing planes
As they flew toward Des Moines, the weather was bad and visibility poor.
“Let me know when you see the runway lights,” the pilot told Sons on the approach.
The last plane was scheduled to land behind them in 30 minutes or so. Sons waited for her teammates to come in carrying the trophy and to head to a celebration.
She didn’t know that controllers at that airport were pleading with the pilot of the third airplane to climb to 3,000 feet.
“I’m trying,” Watkins said, his voice strained, “but I’m not doing very well.”
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Chapter 2: Trouble in the skies
Editor's note: This is the second in a three-part special series. Scroll down to find Chapter 1 if you're just joining the story.
In the skies above Des Moines on Nov. 25, 1985, pilot Burton Watkins flew his Rockwell International S500 Strike Commander through fog and icy drizzle toward the 1½-mile final approach to the Des Moines airport.
Traveling above the city’s west side, the Iowa State-owned twin-engine airplane was trailing a Boeing 727 commercial airliner when ISU's aircraft veered 90 degrees to the left.
Nearly three-quarters of a mile off course, Watkins said he was having trouble with turbulence. The tower asked him to climb.
His voice strained, Watkins said he was trying but not doing very well. This was no rookie pilot; he was the director of the ISU Flight Service.
On board the plane were ISU coaches Ron Renko and Pat Moynihan, student trainer Stephanie Streit and runners Sheryl Maahs, Julie Rose and Susan Baxter, fresh off a surprising second-place finish in Milwaukee at the NCAA Cross Country Championships. Teammates from two earlier planes waited for their arrival at the Des Moines airport.
But just 27 seconds after his first announcement of trouble, Watkins said, “I can’t do anything. I’m in the trees now.”
A haunting scene
Amy Worthen still lives on Shriver Avenue in Des Moines, two houses down from the Temple B’Nai Jeshurun. She was putting plates on the table for an early dinner. She heard a roar and looked out to see a flying craft zoom past her window.
“Then absolute silence,” she said. “I immediately went to call 911 and said, ‘I think the life flight helicopter has gone down.’”
She looked outside and saw blue sparks. The airplane had pulled down the power lines, and the neighborhood at the corner of Shriver and Country Club Boulevard — and 1,600 homes in Des Moines — plunged into darkness.
“We were all haunted by the plane,” she said. “It looked so small.”
Her husband, Tom, ran to find his shoes and burst into the street as a half-dozen other neighbors emerged.
“There was a small flame, where the body of the plane rested up against a tree,” he said. “I felt helpless.”
A report by the National Transportation Safety Board offered this explanation: After the airplane had turned sharply left, one engine suffered a temporary loss of power for unknown reasons. Then it could not gain altitude over the rising terrain.
Two blocks west of the Worthens’ home, the airplane had begun shearing off branches of trees and ripping through power lines until it crashed into the oak tree on the southwest corner of Deanna Lehl’s yard at 535 Country Club Blvd.
Lehl still lives there. That day 30 years ago, she said, she was cooking dinner, and her husband was watching the news in the front room, which faces the yard. She thought another teenager had zipped off nearby Grand Avenue, past the Temple and into the intersection, crashing the car into a pole.
But when they ran out, they saw the plane, and a neighbor yelled, “Get back. It might explode.” They saw a flame and a trail of fuel and retreated inside the house.
They lit a candle. They tried to call their children. They thought of the anguish of the families who would find out the news. They considered themselves lucky. The old oak tree stopped a potential path that would have led right to the front of the house.
They often think of that day, remembering the plane door resting against the tree. There was nothing they could do. Everyone on board was dead.
“The startling image I still have is of the body bags on the front lawn, lit by klieg lights,” Lehl said.
Worst fears realized
Teammates waiting at the Des Moines airport remember the faces as much as the words about the horrible news.
Runners Tami (Colby) Prescott and Bonnie Sons were on one of the two planes that carried others on the team and already had landed. The wait for the third plane stretched from 30 minutes to 50.
Sons saw that the pilots of the first two planes were called to a back room.
AUDIO: Bonnie Sons describes how she learned of the crash
“I could tell just by the look on their faces something was wrong,” she said. “Human nature is a powerful thing, and I could just sense that something was wrong.”
Prescott looked at ISU assistant athletic director Tom Lichtenberg. “A look of sadness and grief came over his face,” she said. “Then he said the plane had crashed.”
There was so much seat shuffling before their Milwaukee departure, they didn’t know for certain who was on the airplane at first. Neither did parents who were driving home from the meet.
AUDIO: Bonnie Sons talks about changing planes
Earl Maahs was navigating the icy roads with his wife, Susan, and youngest daughter, Tricia. He had just crossed the state line into Iowa when news came over the radio. Their minds raced: There is a 1-in-3 chance Sheryl was on board. Stay positive.
Earl kept driving. Tricia begged them to stop and call, so they tried, but couldn’t reach anyone with information.
They kept driving. They heard additional news. The airplane wasn’t carrying the men’s team. One-in-two chance, they thought.
Earl rounded the corner on the south shore of Big Spirit Lake toward their home and saw lights and his neighbors’ faces looking toward them. They knew.
At the same time in Ames, the Maahs’ son, Ron, was in choir practice at Iowa State. A friend’s girlfriend came through the door of the big rehearsal hall packed with students and pointed to him. He went into the basement and called his friend, who told him a plane had gone down.
Ron went back to his fraternity and waited. A man came to the door. It was Sheryl’s boyfriend. Ron assumed he had come to wait together for the news, but anguish came over his face, and he began blurting out his grief.
He never said the words, but Ron knew.
The news spread, and with it spread uncomfortable feelings of personal luck mixed with grief for others.
The Iowa State men’s basketball team had taken a bus to Illinois State in Normal, Ill., because the plane they were waiting for never arrived. On the drive, they learned the plane had crashed.
“About halfway there, we got the call on the radio,” former Cyclone assistant Jim Hallihan said. “The bus driver said what happened. … It was a very solemn bus trip from then on.”
Teammate Jill (Slettedahl) Winter chose to ride home with her parents from Milwaukee as the weather turned bad and the family rushed to leave.
Visibility diminished. Cars spun out of control. So they decided to pull over and check into a hotel. The phone rang.
“My mom picked up the phone,” Jill recalled, “And the very first thing she said was, ‘When did it crash?’’’
It was a horrible time, made worse by the instant feelings of both gratitude and grief.
Tami Prescott’s parents had been driving home, too, and managed to flag down a state trooper who told them, “We have good news for you. Your daughter is alive.”
“The other moms and dads,” Prescott says now, “didn’t get that news.”
A state mourns
Iowans were in shock.
“It is clear that this is a tragic event in the history of ISU athletics,” Max Urick, former ISU athletic director, told the Register that day.
As Des Moines residents mourned athletes dying so young, many also decided they had to see for themselves how a plane could fall in a city neighborhood and not wipe out homes.
“They left the wreckage into the next day, so there then came this whole parade of people in cars, the sightseers and gawkers, just everybody coming to ghoulishly look at the sight, which was disturbing to me,” Amy Worthen said.
So many dreams died that day.
Maahs was 20 and had designs on going on to law school, like her lawyer father, Earl.
Rose, 21, and Baxter, 22, left grieving families in England.
Coach Renko, 34, left behind his plans to start a running camp on his land in northern Wisconsin. His friend and enthusiastic assistant, Moynihan, died at 29.
They had all run together as a sports family, adopting the theme from Matthew Wilder's 1983 hit “Break My Stride,” whose chorus would never again propel them on: Ain’t nothing gonna break my stride/Nobody’s gonna slow me down, oh-no/I got to keep on movin.’
The pilot, Watkins, was 58. He left behind his wife, Mary, who had already suffered the loss of a son in an airplane shot down over Vietnam.
Margaret Schiefen was the best friend of another of the victims, student trainer Stephanie Streit of Hawarden, who wanted to go to medical school. The last words she spoke to her friend before her trip to Milwaukee. “I can’t wait to see you.”
Streit, who died at 21, said for the last time: “I love you, weirdo.”
Schiefen was a runner, too.
At 5:40 p.m. that tragic day, Schiefen was less than a mile into her 8-mile run when her mind grew fuzzy and she began losing her breath. She looked up at a clock and stopped running. She couldn’t go anymore. It was about that time, she later learned, that she had lost her friend.
An unpredictable course of sorrow and hope had only just begun.
About the accident
MORE: Read the NTSB report
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Chapter 3: Grieving, moving forward
The memories unexpectedly surface as drivers pass by the spot: An airplane crashed on this beautiful corner, where large oaks shade stately old homes on Des Moines’ west side.
One might see Deanna Lehl in her front yard at 535 Country Club Blvd. An oak tree there was bent at an angle for a year, then died after it was hit by a plane carrying members of the Iowa State women’s cross country team on Nov. 25, 1985.
She’s tried to make the corner look nice over the past 30 years, digging to put in plants and flowers.
She still unearths little bits of metal from the wreckage, and what she witnessed that day rushes back.
“They were runners,” she said, “and they were young.”
It’s like that, day to day, for the survivors. Little bits of memories are unearthed out of nowhere. Smiling faces. The way they ran.
Survivor guilt surfaces, too. And a determination to be grateful for every day.
The message appears in a consistent dream for Margaret Schiefen.
She is a Hawarden schoolgirl walking home with her best friend, Stephanie Streit, who died in the crash that day. They are talking and talking. But when Streit gets to her house, she says that she must go. Schiefen begs her friend to stay with her.
“You know I have to go,” Streit says. “You are going to be all right.”
Her friend, a student athletic trainer, died with runners Sheryl Maahs, Julie Rose and Sue Baxter, coaches Ron Renko and Pat Moynihan and pilot Burton Watkins.
Schiefen made a vow that day.
“Everything good from her would live on through me,” said Schiefen, who today is chief legal counsel for a Lincoln, Neb., corporation. “I am all right. I loved a tall, talented blonde who inspired me beyond my wildest imagination.”
It’s what loved ones have wanted to do all these years — celebrate these lives lost too young — but it was too raw to do so in the accident’s immediate wake.
The hard aftermath
The twin-engine airplane had gone down in foggy, icy weather while approaching the Des Moines airport after the athletes and coaches aboard helped the team to a stunning second-place finish at the NCAA Cross Country Championship in Milwaukee.
Iowans came out in droves for funerals and a memorial at Iowa State’s Hilton Coliseum, where 5,500 people packed in to honor them. Memorial plaques were later erected in Ames, and tracks were named after Maahs in Spirit Lake and Rose in her homeland of England.
Those aboard were honored for their spirit as much as their running. Maahs gave Tootsie Pops to cheer people up. Rose was a determined runner, and her fellow countryman from England, Sue Baxter, was a quiet, committed teammate. The coaches were remembered as second fathers to the women, bobbing along in their stocking hats on runs, doing everything they could to bring out the best in them.
But the subdued return to everyday life was hard. Ron Maahs lost his big sister, who was one grade ahead of him in school.
His fraternity brothers helped him through the first night as he went through cycles of despair and calm. Only later did he gather a photograph of Sheryl as a young girl, place it next to those of him and his baby sister, Tricia, and frame them around poet E.E. Cummings’ entwined words.
A leaf falls. Loneliness.
Sheryl and Ron had shared an old Oldsmobile ’98 at college. They got groceries together. She pushed him to always be better.
“How different would I be, having her kick me in the butt a little bit?” asked Maahs, today living in Johnston and working as an advertising agency chief executive officer. “Or having the opportunity to see what happens to her and how that would affect everyone.”
Sheryl’s father, Earl Maahs, said he and his wife, Susan, have endured a continuous dance of grief and acceptance — one spouse has a good day and the other not, and the next day, it reverses.
The best way he can describe the years after the accident is this: You are a 300-watt bulb that dims to 200 watts, and you can never return to 300. You just try to keep a light on, because the tough little runner Sheryl would keep going.
“It either consumes you, or you move on,” he said, sitting on the sofa in his home on the shore of Big Spirit Lake. “That is the choice.”
He kept running. After all, Sheryl got him into the sport, and they often ran together.
“You’d still like to be running together,” he said, his eyes filling with tears. “It’s tough.”
'It was just different'
Teammates who took other team flights that day helped each other heal, but it was never the same.
“Everyone continued to run, but it was just different,” said Tami (Colby) Prescott. “We were not as good.”
The team didn’t return to the national meet again until five years later.
“Each day, I think about one of the people on the plane,” said Bonnie Sons, a teammate who today lives in the Minneapolis area. “I think of my life, and I’m like, ‘Wow, I wonder if Sheryl (Maahs) was still here, where would she be and what would she be doing? Would she have a family?’
“They all had so much to give in life. They had such promising futures. So much going for them.”
Families of the students on the fatal flight sued ISU, and the case was settled out of court in 1990 for an undisclosed amount. The university admitted fault in the crash by the pilot, Watkins, who was director of the Iowa State Flight Service. Earl Maahs said they sued to press the university for changes in how it transports athletes and used the money to establish a scholarship in Sheryl’s name.
ISU officials today could not say whether changes in travel occurred immediately. But now, Short Travel handles all travel accommodations for qualifying schools to NCAA championships, and the teams take commercial flights.
Ceremonies marked the athletes’ lives at 10 years and at 20, when a new trophy for winning second in the meet was presented. But for many not tied to the athletes, the tragedy faded into the past.
Then earlier this year, Tim Lane drove by 535 Country Club Blvd. in Des Moines.
Plans for memorial
Lane saw a for-sale sign outside Lehl’s home. Her husband deceased and children grown, she was moving into a smaller place.
“It touched a nerve,” said the coordinator for Des Moines’ popular Dam to Dam race and a well-known figure in the running community. “We’ve got to make sure everyone remembers this site.”
These young women, he said, could be role models for people who often jog in the Waterbury neighborhood or for young children walking to school past the nearby Temple B’Nai Jeshurun, engraved with the plea “Love Thy Neighbor.”
Lane wanted to honor these runners, “who knew the power of being active in the environment and built a strong self as they moved across the terrain at a fast clip.”
One of the first people he talked to about a 30th anniversary commemoration and memorial was Mike Bell, a landscape architect with RDG Planning & Design, who’s known for linking people to their environment.
The coincidence of the chance inquiry shocked Bell. Memories flooded back to him.
He knew Maahs from high school track meets; he competed for Spencer, right down the road from Spirit Lake. He also had recruited Maahs as a little sister to his college fraternity.
“She was just really special,” Bell said. “It seems so unfair that the people making such an amazing impact are taken too soon. And Sheryl was one of those people.”
He signed on to help create a memorial. It couldn’t be done on the exact site because it is private property up for sale. But he saw a rising knoll on the end of the Temple property, overlooking the site of the crash, which is across the street. Next to the knoll, branches of a beautiful old oak tree reach out toward the crash site.
Temple officials said that they quickly agreed because of what the site means to the neighborhood, and what those runners’ lives stood for.
Final touches are being made on what is expected to be a sitting area of contemplation and reflection. The plans are to be unveiled at a Wednesday commemoration ceremony for the people who died in the crash and their survivors.
“For me, as tragic as the event was, there is cause to celebrate, too,” Bell said. “When you look at that event, you start to reflect on your own life. I have two young kids and a wonderful wife. I’ve been blessed with a great life over these 30 years. It helps me take those moments and cherish them and not take them so much for granted.”
Keeping memories alive
For Susan Maahs, the crash “seems like yesterday and a million years ago.” After her time with her daughter was cut short, she sought to treasure her other children and grandchildren and make every minute count. The ceremony will be her first time at the accident site.
The teammates who, by chance, did not take the doomed flight have lived with that truth every day. A feeling will surface without warning.
“Mine is more of a terrible missing,” said Jill (Slettedahl ) Winter, who now lives in Danville, Ky.
Bonnie Sons feels moments of guilt that sneak up on her. Years after the accident, she had a chance meeting in her office with Streit’s sister.
“This women stops, and I can see her kind of looking at the name tag on my cube,” Sons recalled. “I had no idea who this woman was. She introduced herself. … It was a bittersweet conversation, because, you know, what can I say?
“The guilt of surviving is a tough thing. I feel bad sitting there. I’m married. I have a beautiful family. I’ve got all these wonderful things going for me. And they have memories of a loved one who’s not here today.”
Memories of those who died stay alive through teammates’ children, who have followed in their mothers’ running footsteps and heard the lesson of gratitude for every day.
Tami (Colby) Prescott of Urbandale watched her own daughter Elyse place fourth in the state cross country meet recently. Elyse had injuries the year before, but Tami often shared the story of her old team and how you never know how many days we are given. She told her daughter the story of Maahs and how she gave Tootsie Pops to lift the spirits of injured teammates.
“Love on others when they are injured,” she told her.
Bonnie Sons, who has spent the past 26 years working in the airline industry, has also watched her children follow the team’s example. Her youngest daughter, Colette, qualified for multiple NCAA championships while running for Carleton College.
“It was kind of bittersweet for me to go watch her run,” Sons said. “(I was) very excited for her, but it obviously kind of tears open the wounds a little bit and brings back those memories for me.”
All Schiefen has to do is look at her daughter to remember her friend Streit. Schiefen was “riding around” town with her after their freshman year of college, and she chuckled at the memory of her loving but “bossy” friend. Streit was a strong Catholic, and she viewed tradition as calling for naming a first daughter Mary.
“How about this? Whichever one has the first girl, we name her Mary,” Streit told her.
“I had no intent of naming my first daughter Mary,” Schiefen recalls now, but her intent changed.
“My oldest daughter, who is 19, is Mary.”
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The 1985 Cyclones
CHARLENE LETZRING: A three-time state champion for Northeast of Goose Lake, her name still appears in high school record books throughout that part of the state, in distances ranging from 800 to 3,000 meters.
SHERYL MAAHS: Spirit Lake High School did not have cross country until Maahs found enough friends to put together a team. She qualified for the Iowa high school state meet and was a top-10 finisher.
BONNIE SONS: The Minnesotan was Iowa State’s lead runner at the NCAA Championships (16:59.30), placing 25th overall and 12th in the team scoring. She has spent the past 26 years working in the airline industry.
SUE BAXTER: A freshman from Britain, she was known for being mild-mannered and devoted to the Iowa State team. Her coach in England traveled to Milwaukee to watch Baxter compete at the 1985 NCAA championships.
JILL SLETTEDAHL: An All-American from Minnesota, she once swore she’d never go to Iowa State because of coach Ron Renko’s rugged training camp. She had a change of heart after her recruiting trip to Ames.
TAMI COLBY: She was a freshman from Boone in 1985 who bonded with her Cyclone teammates during a preseason camp in Wisconsin. She was 32nd in the team scoring at the NCAA meet.
JULIE ROSE: A junior from Ashford, England, Rose brought a little attitude to the Cyclones. “She was a tell-it-like-it-is type of person,” Sons said. “She was hard core. She was tough as nails.”
STEPHANIE STREIT: A student trainer from Hawarden, she nursed the Cyclones through various ailments and readied them to run. She helped Rose recover from painful bone chips in her foot.