Miles To Go Before I Sleep (21 page)

A few weeks later, I was down in Houston visiting my parents. My mother and I were returning home from a shopping expedition at the local mall. Neither my mom nor I could drive, so we took a taxi.

As the taxi pulled into the driveway, my father ran out to meet us. Normally, my dad is a very low-key guy, not easily excited. So it was strange to hear him yelling. “Jackie! Jackie! The president called! He wants you to call him back!”

I was stunned. Yet, deep down in my heart, I expected his call. My Inner Voice told me we would connect.

I called the number my dad had written down and reached the White House switchboard. This time, the operator quickly patched me through to a White House aide who said, “Please hold for the president.”

At that moment, the only thing on my mind was how frustrated I was about my financial situation. So I blurted out, “I really can't afford this phone call. Please tell him to call me back.” I hung up the phone.

My parents were stunned. They couldn't believe what I'd just done—
hanging up on the president of the United States!
I was surprised at myself too. But I felt okay about it.

“Jackie,” my dad said,
“we
can pay for the call.”

“Thanks, Dad,” I said, “but I need to pay my own bills. He'll call back.”

A few seconds later, the phone rang. I picked it up and heard the same voice on the other end of the line, this time with irritation, I heard,
“Please
hold for the
president.”

This time I took the call. “Okay,” I said.

In a moment, I heard a calm, familiar, grandfatherly voice on the other end of the line. I was speaking directly to Ronald Reagan. He had read my letter and said it sounded bitter. I agreed it was. He apologized for the fact that Scott and I had slipped through the cracks. He said there were people on his staff assigned to contact people like myself. He was really sorry that they hadn't.

I asked the president if the government could offer me a low-interest loan to pay for rehabilitation and for my medical bills. I'd pay back the money—with interest—when I was able to go back to work.

He said the government didn't loan people money, but referred me to Project Hope, a nonprofit agency that helps Americans with special needs. We talked a few more minutes, and the president told me to call Anne Kelly, a woman on his staff, to work out the details with Project Hope. He also gave me a special address and phone number where he could always be contacted if I needed to reach him again.

On April 14, 1986, I flew to Washington, D.C. to testify before the grand jury. The FBI wanted to prepare an indictment against the hijacker if Malta didn't convict him.

I still lived with the constant fear of being attacked again—either on the ground or in the air. If a heard a door slam, I'd think it was a gunshot and instinctively brace myself for a bullet's impact. Flying was very scary. I devised a ritual to help me deal with my fear. When I first got on a plane, I'd pace up and down the aisles to check passengers for suspicious parcels that might contain guns or grenades.

One time, a man made a scene because he didn't want anyone to touch a box he was carrying. I asked the flight attendant to open the package anyway. There was a plant inside.

On the flight to Washington, I squeezed Scott's hand to help me feel safe. It was a lot easier to fly with someone along for support.

Frank Fleming, our lawyer, flew from New York to meet us in Washington. Cindy Carter was waiting to meet us at Washington National Airport.

I was excited to meet Carter. She was so reassuring and helpful on the phone. She is a short, well-built woman who looked to be about my age, and had dark hair flowing down to her shoulders. Carter had a slight accent and looked Spanish. She always seemed to smile and had a great laugh. She was married to a former FBI agent and had one child.

In Washington, D.C. Carter interviewed Patrick Baker and myself. She took detailed statements of everything we saw and heard, especially our identification of the men who shot us and the other passengers.

The next day, April 15, Carter drove us to a federal courthouse in Washington, D.C. Inside, I was ushered into a courtroom where a group of average American citizens were gathered to hear my testimony. A prosecutor asked me some questions and helped me stay on track as I told my story.

After testifying before the grand jury, Fleming took us out to lunch. We went to a very nice restaurant near the Capitol. I was relieved to be done telling the story again.

As we were eating, I kept hearing a voice in my head that said, “Call Anne Kelly. Call Anne Kelly.” Anne Kelly was the White House aide whom Ronald Reagan had assigned to help me out.

It didn't make sense.
Why would I want to call Anne Kelly?
We'd been in touch over the past couple of months. She'd gotten Project Hope to help me out.

I was interested in meeting Kelly face-to-face, and wanted to personally thank her for all the hard work she had done on my case. Maybe that was it.

I got up from the table, went over to a pay phone, and dialed the White House switchboard.

“I'm so glad you called,” Kelly said, above the clatter of dishes in the background. “I've been looking all over for you. The president really wants to see you.”

Kelly told Scott and me to get over to the White House as fast as we could so the president could meet us at two o'clock. It was already one, so there was no time to waste.

This was no ordinary day in the nation's capital. It was the day after President Reagan ordered U.S. fighter pilots to bomb Libya in retaliation for state-sponsored terrorism against U.S. citizens and military installations abroad—most recently, the bombing of TWA Flight 840 from Rome to Athens and the bombing of a discotheque in Bonn, Germany.

All day long, stories about the bombing led television and radio reports. The U.S. government flatly denied that it was trying to hit Khaddafy's living quarters in the raid, yet reporters were skeptical.

The bombing was applauded by most U.S. allies, but denounced in some circles. In the United Nations Security Council, U.S. Ambassador Vernon Walters made a strong case for the U.S. action. Walters carefully listed the evidence that Libya was behind the most recent attacks and made an eloquent plea for united international cooperation to stop terrorism.

“The scourge of Libyan terrorism is not a problem for the United States alone,” Walters said. “It threatens all members of the civilized world community. It challenges all members of this Council to give meaning to their commitment to uphold the principles of the Charter and to act in the common defense of those principles.

“Colonel Khaddafy's rhetoric and actions are not only anti-American, his support for terrorist violence is far-ranging and worldwide—his victims are of many nationalities. More than forty so-called Libyan diplomats have been expelled from Western Europe since 1983 for involvement in criminal activities. Terrorist attacks by Libyan henchmen have ranged from the bloody outrages at the Rome and Vienna airports
to the hijacking of an Egyptian airliner to Malta
[emphasis added]; to the streets of Bonn where two Germans were wounded during an attack on an anti-Khaddafy dissident; and to the murder of a British policewoman doing her duty outside the Libyan People's Bureau in London….”

I was glad that something was finally being done to possibly stop the terrorism. I had mixed feelings, though: many innocent lives were lost in the bombing.

Scott felt stronger about it. “I'm glad they're going to get those bastards,” he said.

While Walters was speaking at UN headquarters in New York City, Scott and I were in a cab headed for 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and the White House. The driver dropped us off right in front of the black metal gates surrounding the White House.

We got out and walked over to a security guard standing rigidly at the sentry station leading to the White House driveway. He looked extremely proper and official as he stood at attention. He was a young man, probably not more than twenty-four or twenty-five years old.

“I'm here to see President Reagan,” I said.

The young guard laughed.

“No, I'm serious. I'm here to see President Reagan.”

“What's your name?” he asked.

“Jackie Pflug.”

The guard looked down his list and spotted my name.

“Wow, you must be a pretty important person,” he said.

Another security guard escorted Scott and me inside the gate and into a White House entrance. We walked down a long corridor and then were met by Anne Kelly. She and another guard gave us a little tour as they walked us down another corridor towards the Oval Office.

“On our right is the Green Room, decorated by Dolly Madison during the War of 1812….To your left is the President's Library….”

We stopped in a small, modern, secure reception area just outside the Oval Office—one of the last barriers before reaching the president's inner sanctum.

“Wait here,” Kelly said.

Twenty minutes went by.

I couldn't believe I was actually sitting outside the Oval Office in the White House, the supreme symbol of American power and strength. This was the same room where, the night before, President Reagan had explained the rationale behind the Libya bombing to the entire nation. I could practically feel the history around me: Franklin D. Roosevelt holding his famous fireside chats during the Great Depression; John F. Kennedy staring down the Soviet Union during the Cuban Missile Crisis; Richard Nixon uttering his famous expletives deleted during the Watergate Affair.

As we waited, important-looking people kept coming and going. We both felt like little kids waiting for Dad to see us.

After a while, the door opened and someone said, “Okay, we're ready for you.”

We walked through the doors and into a room that was lit up with television camera lights. There was the fireplace that I'd always seen on television shots of the Oval Office. The high ceiling, emblazoned with the presidential seal, was brightly lit. President Reagan's desk was banked by a curving wall of windows facing out on the south lawn landscaping first sculpted by President Thomas Jefferson. There was a small bronze statue of a cowboy on a horse by American artist Frederic Remington. I was surprised by the size of the Oval Office: it was a little smaller than an average grade-school classroom.

The president's office was filled with newspaper reporters and other journalists. The room was buzzing with energy and commotion.

Above the fray, a very clear, refined, and strong voice—like that of a news anchor—announced our entrance.

“Mr. President … Mr. And Mrs. Scott Pflug.”

President Reagan stepped forward, smiling, with his hand outstretched.

I couldn't believe it. He seemed so different from how he looked on television.

I threw my arms around President Reagan and gave him a big hug. He was caught a little off guard. I think I almost knocked him over!

Flashbulbs went off as our pictures were taken with Mr. Reagan.

He chatted with us a little bit. I thanked him for the help he'd given me in contacting Project Hope.

President Reagan explained to us that there were so many news cameras and recording instruments in the office because there is a public record of everything he did in the White House. Members of the public, historians, or researchers could later access those records.

Five months earlier, I was lying on an airport tarmac with a bullet in my head, waiting to die. Now, I was in the Oval Office chatting with the president of the United States.

What did it all mean?

A few weeks after our meeting in the White House, President Reagan sent me a poster based on the well-known poem “Footprints in the Sand.” The poem tells the story of a man who dreamed he was walking along a beach with God, reviewing his life. The man noticed there were two sets of footprints during much of his life, but at the saddest and most difficult times, there was only one set. He was troubled and asked God about it: “I don't understand why when I needed you most you would leave me.” God responded, “My precious child, I love you and would never leave you during your times of suffering and trial. When you see only one set of footprints, it was then that I carried you.”