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I had never fully noticed this. Not until that afternoon. And I felt sadness at the realization of how much of their daily lives I had missed—their activities, their interactions. How could I have missed witnessing these acts of love between my daughters for all these months? Lorrie looked at me sympathetically and saw a sense of loss and remorse in my eyes.

I put my hand over my heart. It’s a gesture I sometimes fall back on when the girls do something endearing, or that I feel grateful about. It’s a sign between me and Lorrie, a reminder of how lucky we feel about our girls.

I know why it hit me so hard. This was almost like a dream come true. When the girls were very young, one wish Lorrie and I had for them was that they’d be close when they were older. Seeing them together like this was a wonderful realization; I felt like maybe we had done something right. But it was also a painful reminder to me that I am so often not present in my children’s lives.

Lorrie says this was one of those “pilot moments”—a pilot comes home and notices a change in his home or family—and seeing my mixed emotions was emotional for her, too.

I took Lorrie’s hand, and a few seconds later we made a right-hand turn and came upon a large plaza in the village. Laid out in front of us were twinkling lights. Holiday music was playing and people were ice-skating and roasting marshmallows. There was a large outdoor fire pit. I held tight to Lorrie’s hand and enjoyed all of it.

When I go over that day in my mind, I think of the girls, but I also think about Lorrie. I know what a loving mother she is. Yes, I’ve tried my best to instill values in the girls, to help them find more reasons to care about each other. But Lorrie is on the front line, nurturing them, setting an example, being there for them day and night when I am far away. I marvel at how she has created such a wonderful home life for our family.

I am fortunate to be her husband, and to have her as the mother of my children.

JULY 6, 1936, is a red-letter day for me, and not just because it’s the day federal air traffic control began operation under the Bureau of Air Commerce.

Yes, I’m taken with the history, but that day stands out for me on a more personal level. Fifty years later, on July 6, 1986, a fiftieth-anniversary celebration was held at the Oakland Air Route Traffic Control Center in Fremont, California. Organizers invited the public to tour the facility, to see where controllers direct the flow of air traffic over Northern California. Pacific Southwest Airlines agreed to send over a pilot and a flight attendant to talk to the guests, and I was asked to be the pilot on hand.

I had flown a red-eye the night before, as a first officer, so I’d been up a lot of hours and was pretty beat. But I was more than happy to explain how pilots interact with air traffic control.

The flight attendant who had been selected to join me got sick and couldn’t come. So PSA sent over a vivacious twenty-seven-year-old from its marketing department, a young woman I had never met before. She told me her name was Lorrie Henry, and I introduced myself.

“Hi, I’m Sully Sullenberger.”

I have an uncommon name that she must not have heard clearly, and she never asked me to repeat myself. So that entire day, she didn’t know how to address me. She just knew I had a lot of Ss and Ls in my name.

Lorrie will tell you it wasn’t love at first sight. Despite my pilot’s uniform, I looked tired, and she noticed my eyes were bloodshot and I wasn’t freshly shaved. And she kept thinking: What’s this guy’s name again?

At the time, Lorrie had sworn off dating. She’d had a few relationships she considered unhealthy, and had told herself she was taking a break from men. I was thirty-five years old, had been in a short, childless marriage, and I wasn’t exactly looking for long-term love either. But I was taken with Lorrie. She was attractive—tall and elegant, with a great smile—and she seemed smart, too. She was very engaging with all the passersby. Pretty quickly after meeting her, I knew I wanted to ask her