I boarded the second leg of my flight from Washington, D.C. to Los Angeles at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago on November 12, 2013. Flags waved within the terminal in honor of Veterans Day. I had spent the last six days at a professional conference in Bethesda, Maryland, and looked forward to returning home.
To my surprise I was assigned an emergency exit row with three seats—the middle one vacant. The tall, slender blond-haired man who sat in the window seat smiled and helped me stow my carry-on bag. He seemed to be about the same age as our younger son, who had died five months earlier. We exchanged pleasantries, and the young man glanced out the window a few times before we took off and during our ascent and descent, studying the airliner’s movements. I thought he might be an off-duty pilot. After that he became engaged in a book that he read throughout the flight.
I was amazed by his ability to concentrate, since I felt drained from having traveled across the country to see my colleagues and sell my memoir at a difficult time. For most of the flight I read or rested. Few words were exchanged, as is often the case on airliners.
As we gathered our belongings at the flight’s end, I asked what book had kept him so engrossed. He held up a tome on aeronautical engineering. I then surmised that he worked for one of the major aircraft companies in the South Bay. We parted at flight’s end, and I did not see him again.
On Wednesday, June 2, 2016, I learned that a gunman had killed two people on the UCLA campus. The news brought pain and horror, as UCLA is the alma mater of my husband, older son, and me. How could someone callously kill two human beings at this revered institution where I spent some of my best years? I’d always felt so safe on campus, despite the turbulent times when we went to school.
And then I saw the picture of the murder victim—a young professor of engineering who looked so much like my airplane seatmate a few years earlier. The details came across slowly, but I learned that this young man had been gunned down, leaving a wife and two young children behind.
All day Thursday I thought of his widow and fatherless children and wondered if his parents were still alive. How could one family’s world change so drastically in a matter of minutes?
I’ll never know if Professor William (Bill) Klug was my seatmate that day, but I salute him for the good, kind man he was and I pray for his family.
UCLA will endure. It has survived other tragedies and tumultuous times. May it remember Professor Klug and continue its mission in his memory.