In 1992 Terrence and Gloria Davidson moved to Modesto, California. By this time Terrence Davidson was 62 years old and a retired air traffic controller. The couple sold their home in Altadena, California, and moved north to the California Central Valley. They considered moving to San Mateo, California, the San Francisco Bay Area city where Gloria spent part of her childhood, but she and Terrence preferred the slower pace of life and lower cost of living in Modesto.
Eleven years later, shortly after his birthday in 2003, 73-year-old Terrence Davidson heard the doorbell and went to answer the front door. An attractive, elegantly dressed African American woman who appeared to be in her mid-60s stood on the front porch. He was no fashion expert, but he saw that she wore a fancy yellow silk jacket, yellow straight-legged pants, and a pair of blue athletic shoes.
“Hello, can I help you?” He asked the lady.
“Mr. Davidson? My name is Clara Postman, the widow of Arthur Postman.”
Terry called into the house. “Gloria! Gloria! You won’t believe this!”
Gloria rushed to the front door. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
Then she saw Clara Postman and said, “Hello, who are you? Terry, who is this?”
Terry instantly recalled the events on Tuesday, November 12, 1968, when he worked at a regional airport in southern California:
At lunchtime, the shift supervisor of the air traffic control tower drove his pickup truck onto the tarmac and parked behind the blast shield, which was cordoned off in the back by a tall chain link fence with barbed wire at its top. Contractors put up the fence behind the blast shield for the protection of the DME, the distance measuring equipment. The DME sends a signal to let pilots and air traffic controllers determine aircraft distance from an airport runway. It is essential for instrument landings during bad weather. Artie Postman unlocked and opened the gate then drove his truck to the area behind the shield. He was in a hurry and did not close the gate. Consequently, the open gate interfered with the signal the DME transmitted to planes.
52-year-old Arthur “Artie” Postman usually had a ham sandwich and a shot or two of gin for his midday meal. This was his personal version of a three-martini lunch. He preferred whiskey, but gin didn’t make him smell too badly of alcohol. He learned this tidbit of drinking lore from his alcoholic grandmother, Ludmila Postman, whose family lost its fortune because of the 1928 St. Francis Dam Failure in southern California when the flood destroyed the family citrus crop and their oil drilling equipment as the floodwaters tore through the town of Santa Paula and vicinity. To a degree, one might say Artie suffered from transgenerational pathology, but others might say that Artie, like most adults, had free will, free to make his own choices.
Everyone in the control tower knew of Artie’s alcoholism, but it didn’t appear to interfere with his ability to do his job, so they never filed a complaint about his drinking. On the day of the incident, Artie returned from his lunch break unable to hide his tipsiness and he stumbled into the control tower, his body swaying slightly from left and right like a tall blade of grass facing a gentle breeze in the spring. His speech was much louder than usual as he attempted to compensate for his drunkenness. He realized he should not have had more than his usual two shots of gin for lunch. The fourth shot prevented him from maintaining his ability to work as a high-functioning alcoholic.
Of the four men who were on duty at the time of the incident, three appeared to be Caucasian, two Nordic types, and a swarthy-skinned Mediterranean. The fourth one was a chocolate-skinned black man, an American military veteran named Terrence “Terry” Davidson. Davidson served in the United States Air Force as an air traffic controller during the Korean War. He had three years of experience doing the work when the Federal Aviation Agency (FAA) hired him in 1962. By the time of the incident in 1968, Terrence Davidson had at least nine years of experience as an air traffic controller.
The air traffic controllers in the region were acutely aware of the dense mid-November fog that gripped the area and were all on high alert.
A wide-bodied cargo plane approached the airport in extremely foggy weather, requiring an instrument landing. In this case, Artie Postman’s carelessness corrupted the DME, affecting the telemetry of the aircraft as it started to land. As a result, the plane sheared off the top floor of an apartment building, killing eight people. The terrified and horrified pilot managed to pull the plane up, and with the help of the co-pilot and a pair of binoculars, landed the plane safely.
When the men in the control tower realized what happened, they scrambled to divert all other air traffic in the region to other airports. An investigation began immediately after the accident involving a multi-agency coalition that involved officials from the FAA, FBI, the California Highway Patrol, local police, and the National Security Agency (NSA). The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigator also participated in the investigation, although peripherally, in order to forestall a possible jurisdictional dispute with the FAA investigators.
After interviewing the flight crew, investigators quickly identified corrupted telemetry from the DME as the most likely major factor leading to the disaster. This placed the onus of responsibility on the heads of the men working in the control tower at the time of the tragedy. When FBI agents and other investigators showed up to interview the men in the control tower, the first person they wanted to talk to was Artie Postman, the shift supervisor. Without compunction, without hesitation, without shame, and without an iota of guilt, Artie raised his arm and pointed his finger at Terrence Davidson.
“That nigger did it,” he told the agents, “He’s the one who talked that plane in; he’s the one who fucked everything up.”
Everyone in the room turned and looked at Terrence Davidson, and before he or the other guys in the control tower could register a single word of protest and denial, the police handcuffed and arrested him, and then took him to the police station. Yes, thanks to prevailing sociological realities, Mr. Davidson was hauled off, even though he did nothing wrong.
The authorities initially charged Terrence Davidson with manslaughter within an hour of his arrest. The district attorney assigned a hopelessly naive and under-informed public defender to his case. The young man showed up to the interrogation room for his first interview with Terrence wearing a blue suit, black shoes, and a pair of mismatched socks. His briefcase contained a couple of manilla folders and a stack of papers. A Caucasian male of about 28 years old, sandy blonde hair, clean shaven, black-rimmed eyeglasses, slim athletic build, and no ring, presumably a bachelor. To Terry Davidson, he seemed virginal, for lack of a better word.
“Um, Terrence Davidson, is it? Um, they’re not, they’re saying bail is not an option because this falls under federal jurisdiction. Sorry.”
Terrence looked at the guy and had a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. He thought, “The damned boat is sunk and it’s still tied to the pier.”
“Ok, thanks,” Terrence replied. “Listen, do I even get to make a phone call? I need to call my wife and explain things to her.”
Meanwhile, a couple of the investigators began to suspect that Artie Postman did not tell the truth during their interview.
“That guy had been drinking, right?”
“Oh, maybe, I guess. Why?”
“He smelled like it and I don’t think he told the truth. I don’t know, maybe it’s nothing, but there was something about his behavior that bugs me. Oh well, keep digging, right? On second thought, he accused that Negro fellow a bit too quickly for my taste. The way he made his accusation? It was like a performance. Like he rehearsed it or something.”
An FAA investigator rushed into the room. “Hey! You all need to come and see this. I found something out behind the blast shield. Let’s go.”
The only people left in the room were Artie Postman, the other two air traffic controllers, and one local police officer.While the other air traffic controllers reviewed their logs and other records, the police officer wandered around the observation tower looking at all the equipment, and Artie Postman started sweating.
After a few minutes, the policeman announced, “I gotta go hit the can. You guys stay put. I’ll be right back.” He then left to go to the bathroom downstairs.
Bill Ferguson one of the other controllers, swiveled around and said, “Artie, why did you blame Terry for what happened? You know he wasn’t responsible. Why did you do that?”
“I looked into his background,” Artie lied. “I learned some things about him that you don’t know about, and it’s not good.”
“What are you talking about? He was in Korea, and so far, his work is good here.”
“Um, I’m not at liberty to discuss this any further,” Artie continued, “let’s just say that the FBI is here for a reason.” Artie lied because he began to realize that his lunchtime activities might have compromised the DME. He remembered that he didn’t keep the gate to the fence around the blast shield closed while he ate his sandwich and drank his gin. He got up and prepared to leave.
“Artie, what are you doing? That cop told us to stay put. He’ll be right back.”
“Oh, hey Bill, um, I gotta, um, I gotta go to the bathroom,” Artie stammered.
“Then why do you need your coat and lunch pail?” Bill asked.
Artie ran toward the door, but at that moment, the group of investigators returned, blocking his exit.
“Mr. Postman, we need to talk,” one of the men told him, “You just sit down here; you’re not going anywhere.”
Another investigator said, “We learned something interesting from the ground crew about your lunchtime activities. As I understand it, you drive your truck out onto the tarmac and eat your lunch behind the blast shield. True?”
“Yes sir, that’s true,” Artie squirmed.
“And in order to get behind the blast shield, you have to unlock the enclosed area behind it, correct?”
“Yes sir,” came Artie’s weak reply.
“We examined the area behind the blast shield and found tire tracks and a couple of empty bottles of gin. That’s what you do, right? Eat your lunch and drink gin behind the blast shield.”
“What do you want me to say? You already know the answer!” Artie exploded, “Yeah, that’s what I do; that’s my lunchtime routine! So what! Is that a crime?”
“No, Mr. Postman, none of those things represent criminal behavior, but there is such a thing as criminal negligence. Criminal negligence leading to the death of others is called involuntary manslaughter, and that’s what we’re charging you with. Also, you’re facing other charges related to interfering with a federal investigation, obstruction of justice, and lying to federal authorities.”
“But I didn’t do anything!” Artie screamed, “Why am I being arrested?”
That’s when one of the FAA investigators lost his professional demeanor. “Listen, you asshole! You left the gate open, and that interfered with the DME signal! And you also damaged the DME transmitter when you rolled over the control enclosure. You asshole! You killed all those people, then you tried to blame someone else for what you did! Go to hell!”
A defeated Artie Postman said nothing more as the police quietly led him away.
While the authorities wrapped up things in the control tower, one of the other two air traffic controllers, a man named Albert MacWorthy called out to the investigators, “Excuse me! You all need to see this. This is Terrence Davidson’s activity log. You all responded instinctively to Artie’s racist accusation when all you had to do was look at Terry’s activity log. This would have immediately cleared him of any misfeasance.”
“Of any what kind of feasance did you say?” one of the investigators asked.
“Misfeasance. That’s when you do what you’re supposed to do but in the wrong way.”
“Really?
“Yeah,” one of the police officers chimed in, “It’s just a fancy way of sayin’ someone fucked up. Hey, anybody up for a drink? I’m buyin’ and I’m off for the day.”
They all left, and air traffic controllers MacWorthy and Ferguson were the only ones left in the control tower.
“Mac, why didn’t you say anything earlier?”
“Well, it didn’t dawn on me to look at the activity logs until later in the day. I was just as wound up about the whole thing as you were. Think about it, all those people are dead because that drunken son of a bitch messed with the DME. I’m sorry we never reported him for his drinking, but to be honest, it never seemed to interfere with his work.”
“Yeah,” Bill replied, “I was kind of thinking the same thing.”
Surprisingly, the authorities apologized to Terrence Davidson for what they referred to as a “mix-up,” but Terrence resigned himself to the reality of being a black man in America.
“Goddamned prevailing sociological realities afforded that bastard the option of blaming me for his bullshit,” he mused, “Well, at least I wasn’t on that plane and I didn’t lose my job.”
Later that day, Albert MacWorthy sat in the living room at the home of Terrence Davidson. They each held a glass of single malt Scotch on the rocks. Their wives were in another room looking at photography books. Both of them were honing their skills with a camera. Gloria, Terrence’s wife, liked the work of Diane Arbus and Lee Friedlander. Jennifer, Albert MacWorthy’s mate, loved the work of the Harlem Renaissance photographer James VanDerZee.
“Hey Terry man, I’m glad you didn’t get put in jail. Shit, that would’ve been terrible. I mean you didn’t do anything wrong; that racist asshole did it. Can you believe that shit, man? If I ever see him again, I’ll kick his ass, but when he gets out of prison, aw, you know.”
“Mac, thanks, but I think he’s gonna get plenty of ass whippings in the joint, but really, at this point, I’m glad this episode is over, and he can’t be an air traffic controller ever again. Thanks for standing up for me with the activity logs and all. Hey, did they find out? Find out what you really are?”
“No, the closest they got was when one of them asked me why I seemed so uh, anti-racist. That’s what he said, then joked around and told me I sounded kind of like a pinko, communist, then he started laughing. Those FBI agents, I didn’t know they had a sense of humor, but I was wary, you dig? I mean, you and I both know that J. Edgar Hoover has a hard-on for black people and communists. But check this, Terry, I’m a light-skinned black man passing for a Spanish/Italian/Mexican/ Arab/Indian in this here America, and it’s just a matter of time before they find out. That’s just how the ball bounces.”
Terry Davidson raised his glass as a salute to Albert MacWorthy. “I hear that,” he said.