Lost In The Fog

Plaintiffs and the government agreed during the trials that Worthington suffered spatial disorientation -- a loss of sense of relationship to the horizon -- as he had to decide whether or not to continue with his approach but disagreed as to its cause. Lawyers for Love, Hodges and Popa reached an out-of-court settlement. U. S. District judge John Nangle ruled against Worthington in her suit, writing in his decision that "the proximate cause of the crash ? was Worthington's failure to operate his plane with the appropriate degree of care at the most critical point in its flight."

Worthington appealed the decision to the 11th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, which disagreed with Nangle's ruling, concluding that the pilot's disorientation that preceded the crash "was proximately caused by the air traffic controllers' negligence." The court wrote: "Spatial disorientation and the failure to successfully execute a missed approach are precisely the harm that this defendant should have expected after depriving Mr. Worthington of accurate and timely information about weather conditions when he approached a landing strip shrouded in fog." After the appeal, Worthington also reached an out-of-court settlement.

The lawsuits over, life went on as well as it could. "You're numb. I was numb for a long time," says Susie Hodges, who left the island for a while but returned so her sons could attend Glynn Academy in Brunswick. Cheryl Popa never left St. Simons and in 1998 married manufacturing executive Tucker Grigg, who had lost his wife to cancer. Marilyn Worthington eventually left Georgia and is a realtor in her native North Carolina. "There was always somebody there to make sure we were OK," she says of St. Simons, "but moving away kind of clears your head a little bit."

Penta Love, now 81, sought refuge in her grandchildren, at Sea Island social functions and particularly on the golf course, where she remains a 10-handicap still capable of bettering her age. "Being able to shoot your age is amazing for a man, but it happens. You don't hear ladies doing it that much," says Davis III. Adds Mark, "If there is a record, she's probably got it. She's been shooting in the mid-to-high 70s for a long time." Those kind of scores also aren't unfamiliar to the grandson Davis Jr. never got to meet, Davis M. (Dru) Love IV, a ninth-grader who is as passionate about golf as his 20-year-old sister is about Paso Fino horses.

Staying extremely busy (these days he'll watch TV while surfing the Internet and reading a magazine) helped Davis III function after the crash, but he can't count the nightmares that climaxed with tears or screams when the sorrow didn't want to stay in storage. He never stopped getting on airplanes, but he is judicious, often turning down offers to fly in private aircraft he is unfamiliar with. "I think that's what happened to Payne [Stewart, killed in a 1999 air disaster]," Love says. "He just hopped in a plane and got a really, really bad break. All the stars aligned for everything to happen wrong. I try to minimize risk and then enjoy life."

At the offices of Love Golf Design on St. Simons, a first-time visitor can be startled when planes roar closely overhead on approach to the airport, for a moment drowning out conversations and, if the sun is just right, throwing a shadow on the building. On one wall hangs a framed summary on onion-skin paper of a rudimentary nine-hole military-base course Pfc. Davis M. Love Jr. devised when he was stationed in Korea. "The first Love design," says Mark. In one of Davis III's Ryder Cup bags in a hallway sits two of their father's clubs. "This is Dad's from way back," Mark says, waggling a black-headed Royal driver. "And this, he was magic with this," he continues, picking up a Top-Flite sand wedge, its sole worn smooth by thousands of sand shots. In Mark's office is his copy of How To Feel A Real Golf Swing inscribed by his father. For Mark, Your goals will lead to your dreams -- Dad

"Once you get over the tragedy, it's the memories and the stories that you have," Davis III says. "That's how you get over it. That's how you carry on, by reminding yourself of the good things. I was lucky, I had him not just at dinner or after work or on family vacations, I would have him all day, all summer."

Many of those hot summer days were spent on the Sea Island practice turf, working on Davis III's swing, sometimes inside a makeshift perimeter of lighted cheap cigars to keep the bugs away. Love Jr., Hodges and Popa envisioned the Golf Learning Center that exists there today. The facility opened in 1991, dedicated to the three professionals who are remembered with a plaque by the front door.

Gale Peterson grew up at Sea Island and has given lessons there her whole career. In the 1980s, as a young teacher, she took note of everything Davis Jr., the balding man in the ever-present bucket hat, had to say about the craft. "I learned a lot from him," she says, smiling as she notices a white smear on her left shoe. Davis Jr. always had a can of white spray paint to indicate the arc and target line for his students.

"Davis used to ask me every day: 'What did you learn from your teaching?'" Peterson says. For too many years, she has had to pose the question to herself while pausing at the bronze likenesses of absent friends.