Real Survival Stories - Family Plane Crash: Ripping Through the Trees

Episode Date: May 27, 2026

In March 1974 the Godfreys are travelling to Aspen, Colorado for their annual skiing holiday. Brothers Andy and Mark, aged eight and eleven, are buzzing. But as their plane begins its descent over the snow-covered Rockies, the mood suddenly changes. The pilot appears to have made a critical miscalculation. All the family on board can do is hold on tight and pray… For more on this story, see the documentary film '3 Days 2 Nights'. A Noiser podcast production. Hosted by John Hopkins. Written by Joe Viner | Produced by Ed Baranski | Assistant Producer: Luke Lonergan | Exec produced by Joel Duddell | Sound Supervisor: Matt Peaty | Sound design by Jacob Booth | Assembly edit by Rob Plummer | Compositions by Oliver Baines, Dorry Macaulay, Tom Pink | Mix & mastering: Ralph Tittley. For ad-free listening, bonus material and early access to new episodes, join Noiser+. Click the subscription banner at the top of the feed to get started. Or go to noiser.com/subscriptions If you have an amazing survival story of your own that you’d like to put forward for the show, let us know. Drop us an email at [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The 2026 Chevrolet Tracks is the stylish SUV for those on the move. And with the standard Chevy safety assist package, you have the backup to handle every turn with confidence. The 26 Tracks. Start your build at Chevrolet.ca. It's just after 3pm on Saturday, March 2nd, 1974. In the Colorado Rockies, about 12 miles south of the town of Glenwood Springs, skiers carved through freshly groomed snow at the sunlight mountain ski area. Despite the promise of its name, sunlight mountain shivers today beneath dishwater grey clouds.

The temperature hovers around freezing. A bitter wind rolls in, blowing fine, powdery spin drift across the slopes. Not that the weather has kept the visitors away. Schools have just broken up for spring break, and between dark ranks of spruce and aspen, hundreds weave their way downhill, squeezing in the last runs of the afternoon.

overhead chair lifts stretch across the slopes like power lights seated in one their skis dangling over the edge are nine-year-old Danny Schaefer and his older brother David as the chairlift clanks along ferrying its passengers up the mountain Danny gazes out over the tops of the evergreens the Schaefer's arrived from Denver early today for a weekend ski trip and so far it's been a blast As they near the end of the lift, Danny hears something at the distance, a faint, high-pitched wine. He squints across the valley, and there, barely visible against the white mountainside rising

behind it, is a tiny propeller plane. Immediately it's clear that something isn't right. The plane shudders in the air, as if running on fumes. And what's it doing flying so close to the mountain? When the chairlift deposits them at the top of the run, Danny skis to a lookout spot and peers in the direction of the aircraft. He'd seen the plane while he was on the chairlift, so as he got off the chairlift, he quickly skied to a spot on the side of the run where he could have a better view of it. Danny watches as the aircraft turns suddenly its left wing dropping low as it attempts to fly over a snowy, forested ridge line. Then, as if in slow motion, the plane's wing appears to clip the top of the tree

before it drops and vanishes behind the ridge and a cloud of smoke. Danny stares, his pulse quickening. Hoping he wasn't the only witness, he turns to his brother. Unfortunately, his brother was not looking at the time, so when he said, did you see that? He said, no, I didn't see anything. Later, when they rejoin their parents on the slopes, Danny tells his dad about what he saw. But he can't get him to take his story seriously.

His dad questioned him and said, are you sure? People down here saw that plane too. Maybe it just disappeared over the horizon. And so Danny began to doubt what he saw, and he just sort of let it go. Meanwhile, less than a mile to the west, just below a secluded ridge, the wreckage of an aircraft lies smoldering. in the trees. And inside the crumpled fuselage, half buried in debris, are two other brothers, aged eight and eleven.

Their names are Mark and Andy Godfrey. I remember kind of the point of impact where you just hear sounds and noises and violent deceleration, a crash, just that moment where I black out. It was just the tearing sound of ripping through the trees and then, you know, and then, you And I think we must have hit one final tree to come to rest. And that's when I was probably thrown forward and knocked unconscious. Ever wondered what you would do when disaster strikes? If your life depended on your next decision, could you make the right choice?

Welcome to real survival stories. These are the astonishing tales of ordinary people thrown into extraordinary situations. People suddenly forced to fight for their lives. In this episode we meet Mark and Andy Godfrey. In March 1974, the two brothers, just eight and 11 years old, are travelling with their mum, dad, brother and sister to Aspen, Colorado for the family's annual skiing holiday. The trip is one of the highlights of the year,

and as their plane begins its descent over the snow-covered rocky mountains, their excitement for the week ahead builds to fever pitch. When all of a sudden, the mood changes. It stopped being sunny and it started getting cloudy. It started getting a lot more turbulent. Things got very, very serious, very, very quickly. With the aircraft rapidly losing altitude, the pilot appears to have made a critical miscalculation.

And while he tries to correct his error, all the family on board can do is hold on tight as the plane struggles to avoid the mountains looming from the clouds. What I really remember is just looking out the left window right next to me and seeing the ground very closely and the trees and just being confused why we were so low. And the last thing I remember is my mother screaming, oh my God, we're going to crash.

I'm John Hopkins. From the Noiser Podcast Network, this is real survival stories. It's the evening of Friday, March the 1st, 1974. In a well-to-do suburb of Houston, Texas, inside a large house on a quiet treeline street, a family of seven is at home finishing dinner. Drop in on this family most evenings, and you'll find a home bustling with noise and activity. But tonight, the atmosphere is even livelier than usual, because tomorrow the Godfrey's leave for Aspen, the upscale ski resort in the mountains of Colorado.

Once the dishes have been cleared away, eight-year-old Andy scampers upstairs to his bedroom. Of all the Godfries, no one is more excited for the coming week. This is just the second year he's been old enough to go on the annual skiing trip, and he can't wait. I had gone the year before at the age of seven. Before that, I would be left behind with my grandparents because I was just too young to go on the family trip. So I had gone the year before in 1973, probably my first. first time skiing, I was extremely excited to learn how to ski. So when March in 1974 rolled around, I was extremely excited again. Andy is the second youngest of five. The birth of his sister,

Paula, 18 months ago, means he's no longer the baby of the family. But there's still quite a gap between him and his eldest siblings, 15-year-old Ellen and 14-year-old Billy. My older brother, Billy, was, you know, I'd say he's sort of sort of ruled the roost. I was just the youngest brother of three, and so I was intimidated by him. He was much bigger and stronger. So, you know, stay out of his room, those kind of things. Hurrying past Billy's off-limits teenage sanctum, and he pushes open the door of his own bedroom, which he shares with another brother, 11-year-old Mark. I'd say he was a little bit more quiet than I was not as quite as outgoing.

Part of that might be the dynamic of being a middle child where you're, you know, I don't know, not as expressive. And I'm three and a half years younger than Mark, so for a while there I was the youngest of four. So I was pretty rambunctious and always getting into things. You might say that Mark is more like his mother and Andy's more like their father in some aspects of their personality. I think that we're, you know, kind of a good ying and yang to each other. For Mark, a shy, middle child and a family of big personalities, it hasn't always been easy to figure out where he fits within that ecosystem. But lately, things have started to fall into place.

I was just kind of coming into my own, if you will, and understanding my place in the larger world. If you'd kind of kind of think back to when you were 10 or 11, you start getting a better grasp of the world, world at large, if you will. And I remember kind of the better understanding where my place was. For all their differences, the Godfrey children share many things. The same fair hair, the same blue eyes and wide, toothy smiles. They share an aptitude for sport, with Billy in particular showing a lot of promise on the football field. Their father, William, is an executive at a national

bank. Mother Danine is a homemaker who has her hands full with the five kids. In family portraits, the Godfries could be an advertisement for the American dream of health, wealth, and happiness. And it's not just a surface impression. This really is a close-knit unit. Later that Friday evening, Andy and Mark are tucked up in bed, too excited to sleep when their dad comes in to say good night. My dad was a guitar player, and he was a big John Denver fan. So Mark and I remember the night before the accident, he came into our room and played John Denver song, Wacking Mountain High to kind of, as a lullaby, it put us to sleep. So to say we were just so excited to be leaving the next morning as big under sleep.

I've read studies that a person's imprint, if you will, their character, their personality is basically set in the first three years of their life. So, you know, if you're swaddled in love and protection and happiness, I think that has a big impact on your overall personality and your outlook in the world going forward. It's the following morning. The Godfrey's carried their bags across the tarmac of a Houston airfield. The only member of the family missing is the toddler, Paula. She'll be staying behind with their grandparents. Up ahead, its red and orange fuselage gleaming in the Texas sun is a small twin-engine turbo prop plane. Recently, the bank where William Godfrey works acquired

this Mitsubishi MU2 aircraft for its executives to use at their leisure. In previous years, the family has always flown commercial. The upgrade to a private plane lends a distinct glamour to their departure. Young Andy can barely contain himself. I was so excited to get on that plane. For some reason, I wanted to sit in the co-pilot seat when we took off. And my older brother, Billy, had already decided that, Hugh was going to be sitting there.

So we had this little negotiation, which is very surprising because, as I said before, I was totally intimidated by him. While the bags are loaded into the overhead compartments, Andy summons up the nerve to challenge his big brother. For some reason, this day, I had the courage to say, I really want to sit there, Billy. So he said, fine, I'll sit in the co-pilot seat when we take off, and you can sit there when we land. and I was like, okay, deal.

So I ended up going and sitting in the back left seat of the airplane, and Mark was in the back right seat. Satisfied with his negotiating, and he buckles in next to Mark at the back of the plane. A few moments later, the pilot sparks the engines. The propellers splutter into life. As they accelerate down the runway, the fuselage rattling and shuddering,

Mark shifts nervously in his seat. A shadow of unease. passes over his face. I remember being on the plane, looking around the plane. I remember this memory very vividly and thinking something could happen to the plane and we're all together and that would not be good. And I remember putting that out of my brain

and saying, well, that's not going to happen. We're all together. Everything's going to be fine. Mark, don't worry about that. Soon they reach cruising altitude, the aircraft leveling just below the clouds. Mark glances around at the smiling, carefree faces of his family and manages at last to relax. There was a lot of energy, excitement.

There were a lot of snacks on board, so we were eating whatever snacks were available. So it was a carefree atmosphere with kind of no worries or concerns. It's about three hours later. So far the flight has been smooth and uneventful. The pilot has flown them over central Texas and the northwest corner of New Mexico before crossing into Colorado, pointing out sites of interest along the way. The weather has been clear, providing those on board with magnificent views of the landscape below, the topography shifting from wide, open prairie land to high desert plains, and finally to the snow-flected foothills of the Rockies.

In the cockpit, the pilot reduces their speed and eases the controls into a gentle descent, towards Aspen. A few minutes later, they enter a layer of dense, low-hanging cloud. At this stage, heavy turbulence might cause some of the passengers to experience a sudden sinking feeling in the pit of their stomachs. Realizing they must nearly be there, Andy unbuckles his seatbelt and makes his way unsteadily up the aisle. It's time for Billy to uphold his end of the bargain. I walked up to the front and I said, Billy, we're almost in Aspen. It's might turn to lamp to sit there. And he said, no, for whatever reason, maybe he was nervous because it was so bumpy and getting kind of scary. He said, go back to your seat. So I went back to my seat.

And he remonstrates under his breath. He skulks back to his seat and in his indignation forgets to refasten his seatbelt. On the other side of the aisle, Mark is staring out of the window. There's no view anymore. The landscape has been swallowed by a swirling, mass of leaden cloud. It presses itself against the cabin window, like it's trying to force its way inside. At some point, it stopped being sunny, and it started getting cloudy. At some point, it started getting a lot more turbulent. And I do remember we were, I won't say final approach, but we knew we were near Aspen,

that things got very, very serious, very, very quickly. In the eerie twilights beyond the window, the propeller seems. to labor against the frigid air. The wings seesaw. A strange, clattering sound emanates from the cockpit as a blizzard of ice crystals pelts the windscreen. In the space of seconds, things have gone from light and cheery to subdued and fraught. Knuckles whiten around armrests. Billy calls back from the co-pilot seat a dark joke, comparing the situation to a new story from a couple of years ago, about the Uruguayan rugby team whose plane crashed in the Andes.

His parents are quick to admonish him. The comet feels too close to the bone. It was the tone in my mother's voice and then probably my father's voice, too, that it flipped the switch, hearing them reprimand our brother and telling him to be quiet in a tone that I'd probably never heard before.

It's become clear by now that this is not just a spot of bad turbulence. Something has gone seriously wrong. As the pilot wrestles with the controls, William and Dene do their best to reassure the children. Andy, meanwhile, turns his head to the side, his gaze fixed on the window. What I really remember is just looking out the left window right next to me and seeing the ground very closely and the trees and just being confused why we were so low. As they drop even lower, Mountains loom through the clouds, craggy peaks and frozen cliffs banded with black granite.

Dark tracts of forest appear, close enough to make out the individual boughs, weighted down with snow. Mark stares terrified, unable to pull his eyes away. What I saw vividly is what looked to me like the ground rushing up to the plane. Obviously, it was the other way around. The plane was falling very quickly to the ground, but I saw trees. coming up at a very rapid pace up to the window. The plane banks sharply. Somewhere down below, alpine pieasts weave through the trees.

Skiers and hikers are enjoying themselves, making the most of the last decent snow of the season, unaware that just beyond a ridge to the west, something terrible is unfolding in the frozen air. I heard the jet engines, the turboprop engines, prop engines whining at a very high pitch. And the last thing I remember is my mother screaming, oh my God, we're going to crash.

At approximately 3.30 p.m. as the pilot tries to maneuver the aircraft over an alpine ridge, the slanting left wing shears the top of an 100-foot spruce tree, which is all it takes. I remember kind of the point of impact, where you just hear sounds and noises, and violent deceleration, a crash, just that moment where I blackout.

It was just the tearing sound of ripping through the trees, and then I can remember the impact, sort of like a luge, you know, hitting the snow and sliding, and then I think we must have hit one final tree to come to rest, and that's when I was probably thrown forward and knocked unconscious. It is Saturday, March the 2nd, 1974. A few miles south of Glenwood Springs, Colorado, the mountains are bound tightly by a deadening layer of snow and frost.

Millions of spruce trees, twisted and bare, stand huddled against the landscape like shivering battalions, backs bent from countless harsh winters. Just one valley over, the lights of a bustling ski resort glow invitingly. But this side of the mountain remains obscured, shrouded in a crepuscular bloom. The silence is deafening, the stillness absolute. Early this afternoon, a sound threatened to disturb the quiet, a muffled wamp, accompanied by a shrill metallic rending that reverberated fleetingly in the thin alpine air, before it was snuffed out, swallowed by the snow. But the source of the sound did leave a trace.

Just below the crest of a treeline ridge, something has gouged a ragged a path through the pines, leaving a trail of broken branches and a scattering of loose debris. The path leads downhill about 100 feet before arriving at a pile of hideously compacted metal, barely recognizable as the fuselage of an aeroplane. Wings sheared off, cockpit caved in, Engine cowlings ripped asunder.

The bodies of the pilot and the six passengers are still strapped into their seats. All except for one. Eight-year-old Andy Godfrey lies in a heap of shattered glass and mangled aluminum. He's unconscious, but breathing. And slowly Andy's eyelids twitch ajar. I wasn't sure, you know, if it was dawn or dusk. But I think we crashed around 3 o'clock on Saturday afternoon. And so maybe I was unconscious for half an hour or an hour.

I have no idea. But this is where it gets foggy because I think I was so concussed. It is in this state of shock that Andy hears a voice, his mother's. In the seconds before she slips away, Danine Godfrey manages to pass on some crucial words of advice to her son. She literally gave me marching orders as she was passing away. She said, conserve the food, take care of your brother, and don't stray from the plate. And he turns his head.

There, about five feet away from him, his 11-year-old Mark, badly hurt, clearly stunned, but alive. He was really shaken up and maybe had a little bit of blood on him and stuff. So that was a very scary memory. but it also must have been comforting too to see that I wasn't alone. There was someone else with me. While his brother crawls through the wreckage towards him, Mark drifts in and out of consciousness. His injuries are more severe than Andes. His legs are pinned under the seat in front, which was shoved into him as the plane concertinid.

I remember having hallucinations. For a long time, I used to think of them dreams, but now as I get older, I really I was hallucinating vividly. I thought I was anywhere but where I was. I thought I was in the bathroom of our house in Houston. I thought I was in other places. Gradually, Mark's delirium wears off. But being lucid doesn't make any of this easier to process.

It still seems like a nightmare, one that he might yet wake up from. I would have been so disoriented that it would have taken me a long time to kind of grasp what had happened. And then the grasping of what had happened was completely overwhelming. And I think almost too much to process. Andy had been knocked out less and he was maybe moving around a little bit more. And I think us talking and us, you know, confirming for each other, if you will, what had happened helps introduce some level of reality into the situation

because you're able to talk to somebody about it. But sometimes words fail. At eight years old, and he is only in the second grade. Mark has just started middle school. Less than 24 hours ago, they were being tucked in, having a lullaby sung to them. And now here they are, in the cold and the dark, with everything they know upended. Paralyzed by fear, it's only natural that they grasp for familiarity. And so, as night falls around them, the brothers do what they've always done when the sun goes down.

They close their eyes and eventually drift off to sleep. It's morning. The sky above the wreckage is a pole of white. A few miles away in Glenwood Springs, skiers anxiously await weather updates as major blizzard warnings threaten the closure of certain runs. inside the fuselage, a gray translucent leaks through the cracks in the ruptured metal. Andy and Mark, their woollen jumpers stiff with frost, open their eyes to the daylight and peer around. Andy Dys slowly became aware of our surroundings. Our mother was trapped, I think, very close to me, if not, you know, partly on top of me with broken skis and broken plane parts and things like that. So that is a tough memory to have.

I don't think we had identified any other family members in the general vicinity of us that I can recall. Everything is a crumpled mess, sharp, metallic, angular. Mark can't free his legs from whatever's trapping them. And if he moves his head, it scrapes the bottom of the collapsed roof. He is stuck, entombed in deborbed. For Andy, who wasn't buckled in when the plane crashed, he is able to move around a bit more. At one stage, she even leaves the fuselage, clambering through a jagged hole in the side of the plane, and emerging into a snowy wasteland enclosed by towering evergreens.

I do remember stepping outside the airplane just to sort of see if I could walk away or something, and the snow was so deep, that scared me, so I hopped right back in. As soon as Andy steps outside, his mother's instructions come back to him. I'm sure her words were sort of echoing, you know, don't leave the airplane, and conserve the food and take care of your brother. Andy pulls himself back inside the fuselage, kicking the snow from his shoes. The urge to run off and find help might be strong, but that's exactly what he was instructed not to do.

Besides, he can't abandon his brother. Blonde's blonde hair is matted with blood. His head droops forward onto his chest, and his body is racked with deep, violent shivers. I think because of some of the memories, you know, Andy has about being instructed by our mother, gave him some direction, if you will, and he also realized that I was not in good shape

and seemed to be fading, that he had to, in effect, kind of take on that older brother role and be the cheerleader for the group and try and encourage me to hold on. As Sunday wears on, it starts to seem like Mark could be slipping. Andy does what he can. He cuddles Mark to keep him warm. He digs through the debris and retrieves

some of the snacks they'd been enjoying on the flight. When Mark gasps for water, Andy tries to provide for him. He was getting weaker and weaker, is the feeling I had. During all that day on Sunday, you know, I tried to keep them warm and give them what little food we had. We had peanuts and maybe chips and a can of Coke. I think we drank a beer. We were just, you know, very thirsty and very hungry. So we were doing whatever we could to survive.

At some point, the sky darkens. Freezing wind howls through the fuselage, stinging the boy's faces. They hunker down, arms wrapped around each other as the world beyond the plain's hollow shell becomes a swirl of impenetrable white. The blizzard lasts for hours. Pretty soon the wreckage is barely visible under the deep deposits.

For Mark and Andy, trapped inside, there's a sense of being buried alive. Later that day, a distant sound filters through the snow. We can remember hearing the sound of the planes overhead looking for us, but the visibility of so poor they couldn't spot us. And really, we were a needle in a haystack. So whatever parts of the plane that were exposed before the snowstorm, think about it, they just got covered up. For Andy and Mark, evidence that people are looking for them brings little comfort. These search planes seem to inhabit a different universe from the nightmarish world inside

the fuselage. Mark, in particular, seems to be losing hope. I remember him getting depressed and negative and saying, you know, I don't think we're going to survive. You know, I don't know if I was always just positive, but I said, you know, we're going to survive. Hang in there. Soon enough, night falls for the second time. The first night was one thing, but to have to go through that 24 hours later was probably kind of the low for us. The sound of the search planes fades to silence. Once again, Mark and Andy are left with nothing, but the sound at the around.

own shivering breaths. The temperature, already at freezing, plummets. The fresh snow that has fallen onto the crash site hardens like setting cement, sealing the fuselage in a thick, icy carapace. The cold leaches into their bones, slowly freezing the tissue, cutting off the blood to their toes and fingers. Frostbite is killing them from the inside out. And yet they still managed to stave off despair. That kind of strength, we all wonder if we have it. And I don't think you ever get the answer to that question until you're put into the situation, but I think we all have it when we really need to.

It's just a basic human survival mechanism that we're all born with, that put in the worst situation, we will perform at our best. The hours pile up, the night deepening. At some stage the brothers shut their eyes and managed to fall asleep once more. The next morning waking up, it was a beautiful day. So that probably added some optimism that they're going to find us today. The weather's beautiful. It's Monday morning.

The shaft of sunlight flares at the torn edge of the half-buried fuselage, piercing the gloomy interior. Reaching out an arm, Andy can feel the sun warming his frozen skin. He eats a handful of snow to quench his raging thirst. While Andy is up and moving, Mark's eyes are still closed. His skin is ghostly pale. The effort of staying alive is becoming intolerable. But then, his senses prick.

All of a sudden, we just started hearing a noise. I think maybe we had heard some planes go by earlier, certainly during some of the storm. I can vaguely recall hearing planes fly over us, but we couldn't see them. They couldn't see us. So it wasn't like this was the first sound that we heard for the last three days, but it got louder. This isn't like the search planes from yesterday. Soon, the distant rumble grows to a deafening, steady roar. Andy scrambles to the opening.

I stick my head out of the wreckage, and there's the helicopter coming straight at us. And I start signaling with my hand, and we're rescued. And that is a feeling, I guess, very, very few people get to experience the feeling of just unbelievable gratefulness and enjoy. of being out of the ordeal. It's just that, it's over. Monday, March the 4th was a morning of firsts for Danny Schaefer. The nine-year-old had never ridden in a helicopter before, let alone on a rescue mission,

one in which he was the key witness. But as novel as the experience was, his excitement didn't last long. The ground looked very different from the cockpit, and he quickly became disoriented, unable to pinpoint where he, he'd seen what he'd seen two days earlier. On Saturday afternoon, Danny had been skiing on Sunlight Mountain

when he'd spotted a plane clip a tree on a distant ridge line and disappear in a puff of smoke. After failing to convince his dad to take his story seriously, he had done his best to push the incident to the back of his mind. But it nagged his conscience. The next day, when he heard the search planes buzzing across the valley, Danny's father realized his mistake. The boy had been telling the truth.

He contacted local police who promptly enlisted Danny's help in the search for the crash site. After failing to get his bearings in the helicopter, the mountain rescue team drove Danny in a snow cat to the place where he'd originally seen the plane go down. Moments later, a helicopter was making a beeline for the precise spot on the horizon where Danny was pointing.

By the time Andy Godfrey stuck his head out of the fuselage and gazed up into the pulsing roar of rotor blades, word was already crackling through a dozen radios. Crash site located. And then moments later, another communication went out. Two survivors found. It's several hours later. Mark Godfrey blinks up into the bright lights of an emergency room.

All of a sudden, there are a bunch of people surrounding me. There are people asking me questions. How old am I? What's my name? Where do I live? What grade am I in? Do you know where you are now? They weren't answering questions that I was asking him.

Like, where's my mom and dad? Where's my brother and sister? So then I slowly started realizing, you know, that what Andy and I maybe thought was the hallucination was actually something in real life. Due to the different severity levels of their injuries, the brothers are now separated. Mark wheeled into intensive care where he'll be put on life support, while Andy receives treatment for his frostbidden feet. That evening, as he lies swaddled in bandages, Andy learns the fate of his mom, dad, brother, and sister. I didn't have a big reaction, and maybe I was still kind of in shock or whatever, but I,

remember learning later that the reporter said, well, he obviously doesn't realize what's happened. You know, otherwise he would be reacting differently. And, you know, to this day, I feel that the whole accident sort of numbed my feelings a little bit. And it seems like I cry at different times now that, you know, don't cry and things that are really, really sad. And I do cry in things that maybe aren't sad. So maybe something changed to me then, but that's definitely how it went down that first name. Andy will stay in hospital for a month,

eventually losing several toes to frostbite. Mark's journey to recovery is much longer and more complex. He will spend three months in hospital as the medics work to stave off the spread of infection. Ultimately, doctors will have no choice but to amputate. He will lose his left foot and his right leg two inches below the knee. During his long stay in hospital, drifting in and out of a medication-induced haze,

Mark slowly comes to terms with the crushing hand he has been dealt. God had thrown me two, you know, very, very big curveballs. One was the loss of my family. And then secondly, you know, the more time I spent in the hospital, the more I realized how much my life was going to be completely different than what my prior life had been. So not only had I lost my parents, but now I was going to be the same thing. leaving the hospital as a severely disabled 11-year-old boy in a wheelchair. After leaving the hospital, Mark and Andy are taken in by their aunt and uncle,

the Schumackas, who live in Aspen. Soon, little Paula, who has been staying with their grandparents back in Houston, comes to join them. And so, orphaned and uprooted, the surviving Godfrey children must embark on the next chapter of their lives. I mean, it was just sort of of moving on, we did not get to go back to Houston and see any of our old friends or my grandparents were still in Houston. We just immediately sort of transitioned into the Shoemaker House and you know, started making new friends kind of moving on to the best of our ability. I went from being the quiet middle child who's just navigating the family dynamic now to being the oldest in my family and having my grandparents kind of whisper in my ear.

Things like you need to be the head of your family now, Mark. You need to be in charge now, Mark. You need to be the carrier of the family history and the family culture. I felt very alone. At that time, I felt like my structure had been, you know, exploded around me, if you will. I still had both my maternal and paternal grandparents and I was going to be living with my aunt and uncle who I knew, but quite frankly, didn't know all that well. And so I kind of pulled inside of myself at that time quite a bit.

I started, I think, building walls of protection around me. Andy and Mark grow into healthy, fulfilled adults. They become husbands and fathers. But the plane crash doesn't go away. More than three decades after the accident, Andy is talking to a therapist about something unrelated to the crash when he casually mentions the thing that he is effectively disassociated from for all these years. He sort of just said, you know, tell me about your life. And I said, I had idyllic life in Houston, and then I was in this plane crash, and we moved to Aspen.

He's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Tell me more about the plane crash. It's a watershed moment. speaking about it in detail for the first time in decades. It prompts him to go one step further. Andy decides to write an article for the Aspen Times weekly, recounting the events of March 1974. He titles the article, Reconciling the Plane Crash,

as well as being a therapeutic process, writing it sets off a chain reaction of fortuitous events. A childhood friend of Marx, John Breen, has contacts in the world of documentary film, and the article sparks an idea. I think John started thinking, well, I have a story that I think is pretty incredible. I wonder if that could be potential subject for a documentary.

And so I think after Andy's article came out, Andy and John started talking, and then they approached me about maybe making a documentary. Mark is hesitant at first, but in the end he agrees to take part in the documentary. It's not something Mark and I were trying to do, but inadvertently, the process of making our film helped both Mark and I heal. Especially Mark. He really was able to open up, talk about how the accident affected him, and how he grew through this process of making a film and sharing the story.

The film's impact continues to grow in myriad unexpected ways. It catches the attention of a world-renowned psychiatrist who contacts the brothers and suggests they establish a foundation to help other survivors process trauma through the act of making short films. Soon, the Godfrey Foundation for Cinema Therapy is born, and it's still actively helping people today. As stated on the website, the Foundation dedicates its work to the memory of those members of the Godfrey family who died so tragically. William, Deneen, Ellen, and Billy. Looking back on the making of the documentary, Mark recalls many cathartic moments, but one stands out.

We walked up to the crash site with one of the rescuers, and that was such a powerful moment with him. He said something along the lines of, you don't get over it, you just kind of get through it. And I think that's very accurate. And again, you know, it took Andy and I decades to kind of get through it. So I find myself counseling other people that are going through rough times. You're in a storm right now, but the weather will clear, and things will get better.

But you've got to grind it out and you've got to just live each day at a time. But just recognize that you're in a storm right now and kind of lean on your faith. And no one knows what's going to happen, but you'll slowly get through it and life goes on. Next time, we meet saturation diver Richard Bradley. In 2011, Richard is 130 feet underwater in the Northwest Shelf, Australia's largest area of oceanic oil and gas extraction. He's performing some routine cleaning when he feels a sudden pain in his left forearm. It was what I imagined being shot would be like.

I took the full blast off from the nozzle at point blank into my forearm. The ultra-high-pressure water blaster he's using has malfunctioned, sending a jet of dirty water into a deep puncture in his arm. He is now seriously wounded, but he can't simply swim to the surface. His blood and body tissue are saturated with high-pressure helium. What he does next will be crucial as he follows a complex, high-risk procedure. Every step must go perfectly if he is to have any hope of getting out of this alive. That's next time on real survival stories. Listen right now without waiting and without ads by joining Noisa Plus.