Advice from One Crash Survivor to Another

Wednesday, 19 May 2010 | by Pat's Picks

The world watched as a 10-year-old Dutch boy, the sole survivor of last week’s plane crash in Libya, was told his parents and brother did not make it. What we wanted to know was: How does it feel? The LA Times has a remarkable opinion piece, written by Norman Ollestad, who was 11 in 1979 when he survived a crash that killed his father, his father’s girlfriend and the pilot. Ollestad says Ruben van Assouw “has endured two of the most monumental experiences a person can ever go through: the loss of a parent and a close look at death, his own mortality” and encourages the boy to seek out counseling to help him with his grief, something Ollestad wished was more readily available when he was dealing with his own grief.

Norman Ollestad wrote a book about his experience called Crazy for the Storm: A Memoir of Survival