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Pa«c 2# THE SOUTHERN ISRAELITE Febraary 9, 19T9
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by Michael Elkin
Jewish Exponent
NEW YORK-Heroes fre
quently are born of the moment;
the most tragic of circumstances
can inspire the most courageous of
acts. United Airlines Flight 8 was
enroute to New York from Los
Angeles recently when a middle-
aged female asked a stewardess to
deliver a terse note to the plane’s
pilot.
**I have enough nitroglycerin
with me to blow this plane up,”
Irene McKinney’s message read. “I
have some demands.”
The next 11 hours of tense
confrontation, FBI maneuvering
and efforts to insure the safety of
the other 118 passengers and 12
crew members aboard the 747,
gave birth to some inspired acts of
bravura.
Passenger Theodore Bikel, an
actor and singer long active in
Jewish and Israeli causes, was
worried by the long delay after the
jet landed at Kennedy Internation
al Airport, with no announcement
for disembarkation.
In an exclusive interview with
the Jewish Exponent, Bikel, who
served as master of ceremonies at
last May’s “Israel 30” telethon
produced by the Federation of
Jewish Agencies, recounted what
went through his mind during the
ordeal.
“I approached tire passenger
service manager on the plane (Lyn
Collins, Tight supervisor) and said,
“Look, I’m not an hysteric. I want
to know the truth—why have we
not (disembarked)? I need to
know.’ He wouldn't tell me. So I
said. ‘Look, if you don’t let me
know. I’ll ask questions. Is there
someone holding a gun to the head
of the pilot (Capt. Thomas C.
Cook)?”’
Finally, the flight supervisor
told Bikel about the hijack but
made him promise “not to blurt it
out to the other passengers." Bikel
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Bikel answers questions
continued. “By this time, the FBI
had boarded the plane, hoping to
negotiate (with Mrs. McKinney). 1
knew that there were two Israelis
on the plane and it occurred to me,
‘What cause is this woman
espousing—was she from the
PLO, an Iranian?” Who the hell
knew? Take your pick.”
According to police reports, the
woman was upset over her failed
marriage and a fallout with the
Catholic Church.
“I wanted to find out what her
frame of mind was,” Bikel said.
“When I discovered that she was
acting alone, I saw she wasn’t
versed in the ways of the
terrorists."
Bikel, who admitted in the
phone conversation that the
incident frightened him, unpacked
his guitar, hoping to divert the
attention of the passengers who
still did not know of the hijacking.
“1 decided that I couldn't let
myself get down. I come from a
long line of survivors,” Bikel said.
So, as the FBI talked to the
hijacker in the plane's rear, Bikel
entertained with some Hebrew and
Russian songs as well as “Time in a
Bottle” and “Edelweiss,” which he
had performed in Broadway’s
“The Sound of Music."
“I asked the passengers (by now
25 passengers had been allowed to
deplane) to si.ap their fingers,
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rather than applaud, for two
reasons. First I did not want the
negotiations in the back of the
plane to be interrupted by too
much noise. And, I did not want
the wopran to think we were
having a wonderful time; I did not
want her to get irritated.”
For more than three hours, the
captive audience showed its
appreciation.
The hijacking capped a tragic
two-week period for Bikel. “I
haven’t had it too easy in recent
weeks,” he said, still sounding tired
from the ordeal. “My father died
two weeks ago and I had gone to
Israel for the funeral.
“When the hijacking occurred, I
thought to myself, ‘This on top of
everything.’ But I realized that
something like this was more likely
to hit me than anyone else, seeing
how much 1 travel.”
The FBI finally took the women
into custody and discovered that
the purse which she had clutched
so tightly did not contain the
nitroglycerin—merely her plane
ticket, some cosmetics and
prescription pills.
“It wasn’t quite like Entebbe,"
Bikel said. “But the comparison
did not escape me.” Bikel
portrayed a hijacked airline
passenger on the telefilm “Victory
at Entebbe," which recounted the
commandeering of an airplane by
terrorists.
Bikel was not the only
entertainer on board. Actor Dino
Martin, son of Dean Martin, also
performed to keep the passengers
occupied. And, 87-year-old actor
Sam Jaffe also was on the plane
with his wife, actress Bettye
Ackerman.
Headed for New York, Jaffe was
to begin rehearsals for “A Meeting
by the River,” a play by
Christopher Isherwood and Don
Machardy, marking Jaffe’s first
Broadway appearance since 1956.
Was the actor terrified?
“Although there was some drama
when that woman made her play
on our plane from Los Angeles,
her script wasn’t so good,” Jaffe
always the atjtor, noted. “It was
really dramatic only in the sense
that our lives may or may not have
been at stake.”
Unperturbed, he added, “This
play (‘A Meeting by the River’) is
much more effective."
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