…and Dan’s Papers Might Never Have Happened Either

NEWS ITEM: The Montauk Airport has been sold. The new owner has applied to close it and replace it with four residential lots and 21 other acres left to grow wild. If this is approved, the Montauk Airport will be no more.

There was also a time, just four years after it opened in 1958, when the airport might have been permanently shut down. A death might have been involved. Mine. And no, this is not about a plane crash.

At that particular time, I was a second-year graduate student at Harvard University. Although at school, I still lived at home with my parents — my dad owned White’s Montauk Drug Store — and I was looking forward to coming home for Christmas vacation.

The plan was that I would take the train from Boston to New London, Connecticut get a cab to the New London airport and then take a charter flight to Montauk, where Mom would pick me up. I had done this the year before. Our house was on the western side of Lake Montauk. The airport was on the eastern side, on the water, three miles down a desolate dead-end road, just 30 minutes away.

A terrible snowstorm with bitter cold winds was predicted for Wednesday night and all day Thursday. I was expected home Thursday. But I had a better idea. I’d come home late Wednesday afternoon before the storm and surprise my family. They’d be so happy to see me a day early.

When I woke up Wednesday on Kirkland Street in Cambridge, however, the snowstorm was already moving in. The temperature was below zero. But, after considering everything, I thought to go ahead anyway because things were only going to get worse. My roommates, Garrett Smith and Hal Benjamin, expressed concern, but wished me the best. So off I went.

Hopping off the train at New London around 2 p.m. into this blizzard, I took a cab to New London Airport where I met the same pilot we’d hired the year before, who after hearing my misgivings said that he could get us through, no problem.   There’d be a few bumps perhaps, but he was sure we’d be fine. We loaded up my suitcases in the cargo bay and took off in his small Cessna single-engine plane.

Indeed, he had been correct about making the trip. He hugged close just over the waves, so we could see the chop along the way. He was not going to fly by instruments in this, he said. He got enthusiastic when he flew just above a submarine bouncing along.

“It’s out of Groton at the Navy base there,” he said. “They build them. It’s on a test drive.”

Twenty minutes later, the outline of the single runway at Montauk appeared through the storm. Montauk is just 22 miles away over water. Then the pilot swung around fighting wing waggle as he approached through the heavy wind, so as to make a single pass. The runway runs parallel to the shoreline. The airport shack is at the far end. Turning again, he made a perfect three-point landing, smiled happily and came to a halt by the shack.

Reaching across me, he opened my door, then opened his and got out onto the runway. The suitcases banged to the tarmac, and then, as the wind swirled snow at my feet, the pilot offered me his hand, which I shook. But now he was in a hurry. The wind was harsh. Climbing back in, he slammed the door, gunned the engine and taxied noisily back down the runway. At the far end, he turned around to take off into the wind.

It was at that moment that my adult brain suddenly told me something important.   I had of course not called my parents. I was going to surprise them. But now, it was below zero, a blizzard, and I was freezing in my light jacket. Well, there was the airport shack. Leaving my suitcases where they were, I ran toward its front door.

There was a padlock on it. This can’t be right. I yanked hard on it, but nothing moved. I looked up. I have to stop that plane!

But now he was taxiing down the runway toward me, picking up speed, and moments later, he was leaping up into the air to roar right over me and up into the clouds. After that, the roar was drowned out by the wind. And he was gone.

At this point, I noticed there was a payphone just alongside the shack. I ran to it.

Thank God. But the payphone was frozen in the ice. Where you put the coins in was also frozen in ice. Oh God!

What were my options? I could stay here and die. I could walk 6 miles around the lake to my house. Or, or what? But then it came to me. The runway ended at the lake, and the lake was all ice and frozen.

On the other side, a mile across the water, had to be the Montauk Coast Guard Station. I couldn’t see it through the storm. But I knew it was there. And it had to be open. The Coastguardsmen lived in this building.

Could I run across? Would the ice hold me? I had no choice. I looked back at my suitcases, sitting there. They’d be okay. They had my ID tags on them. Harvard decals. Nobody would steal them. Would they? Absolutely not.

So off I ran, over the dune and onto the ice. I ran as if my life depended on it.  I prayed the ice would not crack. But if it did, I’d struggle back up. This was perhaps the longest 45 minutes of  my life. And with the sun setting, it was getting dark.

Finally, there I was, banging and rattling the front door of the station, shivering uncontrollably, until, finally, I was let into a warm living room with a blazing fire at the far end and numerous people in starched white uniforms.

They sat me in a comfortable chair by the fire, wrapped me in blankets, brought me hot chocolate and then, after I recovered, led me to a telephone where I could call my parents.

“Surprise!” I said.