Coaches at Wasilla High School in Alaska, where Russell was a football player, wrestler and discus thrower, told the Anchorage Daily News they are shocked at the news.
Track and field coach Gary Howell said he was “absolutely the kind of kid you want on your team.”
“He had that energy, that vibrance,” Howell said. “He was that kid you high-five in the hallway even if you don’t know him.”
29 year old Space Force cadet known by his call sign #SkyKing took off from SeaTac International Airport on August 10th during an intense "Accelerated" #SpaceForce joint military training exercise called "Noble Eagle" with 2 participating F-15s.
Fox News
A Horizon Air passenger plane crashed on an island in Puget Sound Friday night, not long after a suspect conducted an “unauthorized take-off” from Seattle-Tacoma International Airport in Washington state, officials said.
The unidentified pilot was a 29-year-old “suicidal male,” the sheriff’s department said. The Seattle Times reported that he was a Horizon Air employee from Sumner, Wash.
The drama played out in real time on the Internet as the public was able to hear the suspect communicating with air traffic controllers via the air traffic control scanner.
"I've got a lot of people that care about me. It's going to disappoint them to hear that I did this. I would like to apologize to each and every one of them. Just a broken guy, got a few screws loose, I guess," the suspect said, according to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. [...]
According to Alaska Airlines, the aircraft was stolen about 8 p.m. Alaska Airlines said it was in a "maintenance position" and not scheduled for a passenger flight.
— ✮ ⓁⓄⓁⒶ ✮ (@TheBigBadFox) August 11, 2018
This is a heart breaking story and yet oddly an inspirational one as well. Richard Russell is the Rogue Cadet and he sounds like a really likeable guy from the audio, he was joking around and at times showing the depressing state that men are in these days. In fact, suicide rates among White Males has exponentially increased through out the years while every other race has actually declined and this incident just highlights the cultural crisis America is in that nobody is talking about.
There are many reasons for this crisis (most of which I won't go over here) a big reason though is that men aren't meant to live like drones and robots doing menial jobs for corporations that hate them, at one point Richard even says,
BTW He Stole a Q-400
Those are big planes and he ended up doing a barrel roll like a champ!! And that's the inspirational part in all this, in a time where people are shooting up schools and cops this guy stole a plane and despite everyone thinking he was just a simple man--navigated it with the heart of a pilot and went out on his own terms without hurting a single person...emotionally he hurt people in his life WHICH IS WHY SUICIDE IS RARELY EVER THE ANSWER...physically though he died and rose again a legend.
A few good comments from Youtube:
Full Audio
An Ode to Sky King:
I am a Space Cowboy
I have answered Trump's Call
I am an American Spaceman
My mission is to Orbit, use the Force and Win
I am faithful to a Final Frontier
A tradition of doing my part
And going where no man has gone before
I am an American Spaceman
Guardian of the Galaxy,
My Nation's Phaser set to Stun,
Basically one of the Avengers.
I defend Space with my Life.
I am an American Sapceman.
Astronaut, Master Chief, Cog.
I will never leave a Spaceman behind,
I will do. Or do not. There is no try.
Rest in peace Richard Russell.
After I found out Rich loved editing multimedia, I really wanted to make an entry to the video memes.— GROYPEX JONES✝️🌻RIP RICH✈️ (@SpaceForceCMNDR) August 11, 2018
I wanted to create somewhat of a recreation of his journey in honor of the joy it's brought to everyone.
Here's my short, "Sky King" pic.twitter.com/7WilDuNi4N
In related news Meghan Elizabeth Trainor wrote a simple and good piece on Medium:
There is a haunting symmetry in the deaths of Richard Russel & Tahlequah’s calf. The barrel roll of a suicidal pilot mirrored in the diving mother, retrieving her baby to carry her to the surface again & again.
He said he was ‘just a broken man.’
Her salmon runs are broken.
What I did not realize was that he had sought her in his final hours…[...]
“Hey, I want the coordinates of that orca, you know that mama orca with the baby? I wanna go see that guy.”
Twenty years ago I wrote the story of Elba Gallagher, a narrative about the collapse of technology and a dystopian landscape that stretched from the Duwamish River to the edge of Goldendale, filled with sub-librarian bikers and cloned circus kids and government time machines. Time caught up with me and now we live in a different kind of dystopia. Parable of the Sower haunts everyone since the election.
Maybe we should stop writing dystopian literature…are we are conjuring it into being? Maybe now it is time to write stories about men with unbroken hearts and salmon runs as dense as the river can hold.
In Addendum: Mother Orca Tahlequah Drops Her Dead Calf
“J35 frolicked past my window today with other J pod whales, and she looks vigorous and healthy,” Ken Balcomb, founding director of the Center for Whale Research, wrote in an email to The Seattle Times. “The ordeal of her carrying a dead calf for at least seventeen days and 1,000 miles is now over, thank goodness.”
J35, also known as Tahlequah, is part of the critically endangered southern-resident killer-whale population. Balcomb said J35 probably has lost two other offspring since giving birth to a male calf in 2010.
The loss of the most recent calf “may have been emotionally hard on her,” Balcomb said. “She is alive and well and at least over that part of her grief. Today was the first day that I for sure saw her. It is no longer there.”
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.