It was 4 p.m. on Jan. 13, 1982, and Lenny Skutnik was just trying to make his way home. It was snowing. Most of the city had left work early, and Skutnik’s was one of a slew of cars battling rush hour traffic near the 14th Street Bridge when Air Florida Flight 90 slammed into the bridge — leaving behind just a handful of survivors clinging to the plane’s tail section in the frigid waters of the Potomac.
Thirty years ago Friday, an obscure government clerk was thrust into the middle of a tragedy that still resonates with many who lived in the Washington area, the deaths of 78 people in the Flight 90 crash. Skutnik, who performed a televised rescue in the Potomac, soon found himself in the surreal role of national hero. Within weeks he’d be in President Reagan’s box during the State of the Union address.
But the head-spinning events left him largely unchanged, he said.
“It was one of those things that happened, it runs it course,” he said. “What I did — that was over with quick. But because it was caught on film, it was on the news, it just got that kind of coverage. It just went out all over the world.”
On that day in 1982, Skutnik made his way to the banks of the Potomac to see the crash. The U.S. Park Police had brought in a helicopter to lift passengers out of the river, but one woman, Priscilla Tirado, was too weak to hold on to a tow line.
As the world watched on television, the 26-year-old Skutnik pulled off his boots, leaped into the Potomac and dragged Tirado out.
“I was just caught up in it — seeing another human being in pretty serious trouble,” he said. “She just needed help.”
Two weeks later, he was being singled out by the president on national television. He received medals from the Coast Guard and the Carnegie Hero Fund. Letters addressed to the “Hero of the Potomac” flooded his mailbox. The unassuming IT employee in the Congressional Budget Office had suddenly become a household name.
These days, Skutnik shrugs off the role he played that day. He still lives in Lorton. In 2010, he retired after more than 30 years on the job at the CBO. He fishes for fun, visits his family in Mississippi twice a year and has a son in Northern Virginia and stepson in Kentucky. He’ll be a grandfather in May.
Skutnik says he and the survivors of Flight 90 have lost touch, but he still keeps tabs on some of them. Two have died. Most, he says, have tried to move on.
“Around the anniversary date, you get a few calls. And then that’s it — it’s pretty much run its course,” he said.
He says he doesn’t consider himself a hero. “It feels kind of funny. I just look at it — I saw someone in serious need of help and I helped, which I think is human nature,” he said.
