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Theresa has been offered the opportunity to listen to the cockpit voice recordings, but has declined to do so. A father of a flight attendant chose to listen, and said he ended up in therapy as a result. The cockpit door was open, and the sounds of screaming passengers are very clear on the tape. “It would be too hard for me to hear that,” Theresa said.

In 2006, on the tenth anniversary of the crash, she did find the courage to approach Greg Feith, the investigator: “I can take it,” she said to him. “Please tell me: Was my father screaming?” He responded: “Absolutely not. Your dad was going through his checklist. He and Captain Kubeck did everything they were supposed to do until they were incapacitated.”

Theresa told Lorrie that when she watched me on 60 Minutes, “I thought to myself, ‘I wish that was my dad. I wish he could have had the same success, and that everyone would be safe, and that it would be him being the hero and giving interviews.’”

She also told Lorrie this: “Because I lived through the worst outcome, I think I celebrate Flight 1549 so much more. My joy for the passengers and crew is so much more profound.”

In her letter to me, Theresa explained that she had spent a lot of time over the years thinking about “what-might-have-beens” involving her dad, who was fifty-three years old when he died. He passed away four years before Theresa’s daughter, Peyton, was born. “That’s the hardest part of the loss,” she wrote, “that he’ll never meet his granddaughter.”

Along with her letter, Theresa enclosed a photo of herself with her husband and daughter—“so you can see who you’ve touched.” They’re a very attractive family, pressed tightly together, all smiles. She told Lorrie that she now feels her father and I are connected; two pilots who tried their best to save lives. Though her father would never see his granddaughter, it gave her comfort to know that I would.

And so I was honored to hold the photo of beautiful nine-year-old Peyton in my hands as I thought about First Officer Hazen and the things he has missed.

17

A WILD RIDE

IN THE EARLY days after Flight 1549, I could sleep only a couple hours at a time. I kept questioning myself. On the very first night, I had said to Lorrie: “I hope they know I did the best I could.” That thought remained in my head.

It took me a couple of months to process what had happened and to work through the post-traumatic stress. Our pilots’ union has a volunteer Critical Incident Response Program team that began helping me and the crew the day after our Hudson landing. I had asked them for a road map of what to expect. They told me I’d be sleeping less, I’d have distracted thinking, I’d lose my appetite, I’d have flashbacks, and I’d do a lot of second-guessing and “what-iffing.”

They were right on all fronts. For the first couple of weeks, I couldn’t read a book or newspaper for more than a few seconds without drifting off into thoughts of Flight 1549.

“You might find it hard to shut off your brain,” I was told, and that described exactly what I was going through. I’d wake up in the middle of the night and my brain was running hard: What could I have done differently? What did other pilots think of what I had done? Could I have found time to tell the flight attendants that we’d be landing in water? Why didn’t I say “Brace for water landing!” when I finally got on the public address system? Could I have done something else, something better?

Eventually, I dealt with the issues in my psyche and started sleeping again. I went through every scenario. For instance, if I had said “Brace for water landing,” passengers might have begun fumbling around, desperately searching for life vests, rather than bracing. They might have panicked. The investigation would later show that before we took off, only 12 of 150 passengers had read the safety card in the seat pocket in front of them.

In the end, I was buoyed by the fact that investigators determined that Jeff and