The Bailey family, from left, Trent, Brownell, Spencer and Brandon, visits the United Flight 232 memorial located at Chris Larsen Park in Sioux City, on July 19, 1999, the 10th anniversary of the crash. Spencer Bailey is the boy being carried by Lt. Col. Dennis Nielsen as depicted in the statue.
- Angela Tague, Sioux City Journal file
The Spirit of Siouxland Statue is located at the United Flight 232 Memorial in Sioux City's Chris Larsen Park. The statue, created by artist Dale Lamphere, depicts the rescue of Spencer Bailey by Lt. Col. Dennis Nielsen following the July 19, 1989, crash of United Flight 232 at Sioux Gateway Airport. The statue was inspired by a photo made by Sioux City Journal photographer Gary Anderson.
- Tim Hynds, Sioux City Journal
At 13, Spencer Bailey wondered if he was going to spend the rest of his life being “that little boy in the photograph.”
The photograph, of course, was of Lt. Col. Dennis Nielsen carrying him – then 3 years old – from the wreckage of United Airlines Flight 232 on July 19, 1989. Sioux City Journal photographer Gary Anderson took the shot that became a symbol of the crash that, miraculously, 184 passengers had survived. Printed and aired around the world, the photo helped people understand the tragedy and the heroic efforts that went into the rescue.
Bailey, his 6-year-old brother, Brandon, and their mother, Frances Lockwood Bailey, were flying from Denver to Chicago when the plane went down near the Sioux Gateway Airport. For the better part of three decades, he hasn’t spoken publicly about the crash or its effect on his life.
On the 30th anniversary of the crash, however, he agreed to be interviewed for “Time Sensitive,” a podcast that features interviews with “curious and courageous people ... who have a distinct perspective on time.”

The wreckage of Flight 232 sits at Sioux Gateway Airport in July 1989. The crew could only make right turns in the disabled aircraft, which crash-landed at the airport, killing 112 people. The remaining 184 passengers and members of the flight crew survived the crash.
- Gary Anderson, Sioux City Journal file

The remains of a passenger on Flight 232 are transferred to a van for transportation to a temporary morgue near the runway of Sioux Gateway Airport. The DC-10 crashed while trying to make an emergency landing after developing mechanical trouble in flight. (AP Photo/Jeff Carney)
- Jeff Carney





The 232 experience, the 33-year-old said, “is why I became a journalist. Journalism requires deep empathy, if you’re good at it. I love telling other people’s stories. It’s probably why I haven’t gone and tried to tell this story.”
Bailey and Andrew Zuckerman, co-founders of The Slowdown, an entertainment media company, talked last week about the crash, the photograph, the "Spirit of Siouxland" statue that was based on the picture, and his mother, one of the 112 passengers who died.
Specific details, however, elude him.
“I don’t remember anything,” Bailey admitted. “It’s everything I’ve read or that people have told me. I was in a coma for five days. I was in a hospital bed for the first nine days after the crash and, only then, was I able to kind of start moving around. I had such bad brain trauma, and my head was so swollen that my eyes were shut. Coming out of that coma was like a rebirth for me. Only instead of being born out of my mom, I was now a motherless child.”

The photograph that symbolized the 1989 rescue effort in Sioux City: Spencer Bailey, 3, is carried from the wreckage of United Flight 232 after it crashed at Sioux Gateway Airport on July 19, 1989. Lt. Col. Dennis Nielsen of the 185th Fighter Wing, Iowa Air National Guard, carries Bailey.
Gary Anderson, Sioux City JournalBrother fills in details
Eleven years ago, Bailey talked with older brother Brandon about the crash. “We had dealt with the aftermath as brothers growing up together, but we had never formally talked about it,” Spencer said.
Among the revelations: As the plane was experiencing difficulty, their mother had her arms around the backs of Brandon, 6, and Spencer, 3. She was “almost like an angel or something,” Bailey remembered his brother saying. “And when it crashed, everything for him just went gray. He didn’t go unconscious. He woke up on the runway with his legs broken. A 6-year-old boy, thinking if he could flip his legs around, he could get up and walk away. Almost like if it were a video game.”
Spencer, meanwhile, had brain and head trauma, “but my body was extremely resilient, so my worst injuries were brain injuries. Physically, my only issue that I had was my left ear, which had almost been sliced off and had to be stitched back on.”





Their father, Brownell, was on a business trip. Spencer’s twin, Trent, was staying with relatives.
When dad heard about the crash, he booked a flight to Omaha, then rented a car to get to Sioux City, uncertain what had happened to his family.
“By the night of July 19, he had received a call from the hospital and there was a boy there that the doctors were describing as ‘Randy,’ but it was actually Brandy, which is what we called Brandon when we were little,” Spencer Bailey recalled. “My dad knew that Brandon had made it and was in really bad condition.”
Picture provides clues
Brownell Bailey learned about the photograph from a relative who had seen the picture on the front page of a paper in Texas. An uncle told him, “I believe that’s Spencer.”
“The paper hadn’t labeled me; they didn’t know who I was. I was just a little boy who had survived,” Bailey said. “My dad went by a newsstand at the airport and saw the photo of me and he told me he just had a feeling in his gut that I had made it. He kind of assumed that, on some level, they wouldn’t have put a photo of a dead boy on the cover of the newspaper.”
Trent and Spencer were able to attend their mother’s funeral; Brandon was still in the hospital. While Spencer remembers having “tons of scabs all over me from the crash,” he doesn’t recall much more. “We really didn’t know what (the funeral) was. We were two 4-year-old kids playing around.”

Flight attendants who aided the victims of United Flight 232 crash in in Sioux City pose July 28, 1989, at a news conference in Chicago. From left, are Georgeanne Del Castillo, Janice Brown, Virginia Murray, Donna McGrady, Susan White, and Timothy Owens.
- Charles Bennett, Associated Press file

Crew members of United Airlines Flight 232 meet with reporters in Washington Sept. 7, 1989, to discuss their efforts to guide the disabled aircraft. From left are Capt. Al Haynes, First Officer William Records, Second Officer Dudley Dvorak and Capt. Dennis Fitch.
- Charles Tasnadi, Associated Press file

From left, Iowa Air National Guard Lt. Col. Dennis Nielsen, Trent Bailey, Brownell Bailey, Brandon Bailey and Spencer Bailey are shown in a press conference July 19, 1990, on the one-year anniversary of the crash of United Flight 232.
- Mark Fageol, Sioux City Journal file

The Bailey family, from left, Trent, Brownell, Spencer and Brandon, visits the United Flight 232 memorial located at Chris Larsen Park in Sioux City, on July 19, 1999, the 10th anniversary of the crash. Spencer Bailey is the boy being carried by Lt. Col. Dennis Nielsen as depicted in the statue.
- Angela Tague, Sioux City Journal file

Larry Finley, executive director of the Mid America Museum of Aviation & Transportation, looks at the United Flight 232 exhibit at the museum, located north of Sioux Gateway Airport, in July 2013. The DC-10 crashed at the Sioux City airport on July 19, 1989.
- Provided

United Airlines head flight attendant Jan Brown (retired), right, talks about her experience, while from left, flight attendant Susan White Callendar, Capt. Al Haynes (retired), and first officer Bill Records (retired) look on during a press conference held in conjunction with the 25th anniversary of the crash of United Flight 232.
- Dawn J. Sagert, Sioux City Journal

Clockwise, from top left, United Airlines flight crew members Tim Owens, Kathy Tam, Georgia DelCastillo, Barb Gillaspie, Donna McGrady, Jan Brown, Bill Records, Capt. Al Haynes and Susan White Callendar are shown during a press conference is held in conjunction with the 25th anniversary of the crash of United Flight 232.
- Dawn J. Sagert, Sioux City Journal

Ellen Badis, center, of Charlotte, N.C., introduces sons Eric Badis, left, and Aaron Badis, second from left, following a press conference held in conjunction with the 25th anniversary of the crash of United Flight 232 in Sioux City.
- Dawn J. Sagert, Sioux City Journal

United Airlines pilot Capt. Al Haynes makes his way around emergency responder units parked along Pierce Street just before speaking during a panel discussion held in conjunction with the 25th anniversary of the United Airlines flight 232 crash at the Orpheum Theatre.
- Dawn J. Sagert, Sioux City Journal

United Airlines pilot Capt. Al Haynes, left, signs a program for Jeanne Dietrich, right, of Omaha, on July 18, 2014, before speaking during a panel discussion at the Orpheum Theatre held in conjunction with the 25th anniversary of the United Flight 232 crash.
- Dawn J. Sagert, Sioux City Journal

Flight crew members hold hands as they gather at the crash site memorial during the Reflection Ceremony commemorating the 25th anniversary of the crash of United Flight 232 at the Mid America Museum of Aviation and Transportation in Sioux City on July 19, 2014.
- Jim Lee, Sioux City Journal

Carnations are shown on the Flight 232 memorial sculpture at Chris Larsen Park on July 20, 2014, following an ecumenical remembrance service. The service was the conclusion of the weekend's 25th anniversary observance of the Flight 232 crash.
- Dawn J. Sagert, Sioux City Journal





Because they were so young, the two also didn’t have much time with their mother. “My godmother was her best friend, so I’ve heard stories from her,” Bailey said. He learned that she was an artist and children’s clothing designer. “There’s a photo of us in a suburban mall in Littleton, Colorado, modeling her clothes down a runway. She was just somebody who had so much creativity inside her and I think it came from family.” Her grandfather was an inventor; her great-grandfather (Spencer’s namesake) was a painter who was art director of Ladies’ Home Journal.
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Without her, Bailey said, “you just grow up fast. By the time I was 7 or 8, I was doing my own laundry, making do, helping clean the house, contributing, doing what you could ... We were a broken house.”
At 13, Bailey convinced his father that he and Trent should go to boarding school. Brandon – who had become a top athlete despite the injuries to his legs – had already gone off to Loomis Chaffee in Windsor, Connecticut.

Retired Capt. Al Haynes, left, pilot of United Airlines Flight 232, is shown at the 1994 dedication service for the "Spirit of Siouxland" statue on Sioux City's riverfront. Also pictured are Brandon Bailey, Spencer Bailey, his twin brother, Trent, their father, Brownell Bailey, and Col. Dennis Nielsen. The statue was based on a photo by the Journal's Gary Anderson that captured Nielsen carrying Spencer, then 3, to safety after the jet crashed at Sioux Gateway Airport on July 19, 1989.
Sioux City Journal fileThe twins went to different schools and found it was a way to deal with the changes in their lives. Because of his injuries, Spencer Bailey had difficulty reading. “It wasn’t until I was probably in seventh or eighth grade that I actually became able to read at a level that was similar to my peers.”
Concerned that he would always be that boy in the photograph “led me to try to figure out: What am I going to do with my life? What am I passionate about? What am I good at?”
Best friends knew of the accident; others didn’t. Senior year, his then-girlfriend convinced him to tell the story as part of his senior speech. “It was 350 students,” he said. “The room was silent.”
As we commemorate the 30th anniversary of the Flight 232 crash in Sioux City, we're looking back both at that fateful day in 1989 and how Siou…
Among the information: His image had been used for a memorial, the Spirit of Siouxland. It was based on the Anderson photograph.
Family attends dedication
The Baileys were at the dedication in 1994, “and I was such a confused 9-year-old boy,” Bailey said. “Dennis Nielsen was there and we tried to redo the (pose) – he couldn’t lift me. I was too big, but it made for a good laugh, anyway. And I think that’s important. There is some levity in darkness.”
On the 20th anniversary, Bailey and his father returned to Sioux City. “The year before, the Sioux City Journal had done a story on the anniversary of the crash and I was asked about how I felt seeing myself in (a) statue. I would say the same thing today, which is: I’m sure people go back and look at that statue and think that I’m a dead boy. They probably don’t realize I’m still alive.”

The Spirit of Siouxland Statue is located at the United Flight 232 Memorial in Sioux City's Chris Larsen Park. The statue, created by artist Dale Lamphere, depicts the rescue of Spencer Bailey by Lt. Col. Dennis Nielsen following the July 19, 1989, crash of United Flight 232 at Sioux Gateway Airport. The statue is inspired by a photo made by Sioux City Journal photographer Gary Anderson.
Tim Hynds, Sioux City JournalWhen Bailey saw the photograph from the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013, he thought of Anderson’s shot from Flight 232. “They’re totally different events, but the iconic nature of that image is what sticks in people’s minds. It represents that event. I wasn’t in Boston. I can’t grasp what happened that day, but the small semblance of what I can grasp comes through that picture.”
Before starting The Slowdown, he wrote about architecture, art, culture, design and technology for Town and Country, The New York Times Magazine, Fortune and Newsweek. From mid-2013 to mid-2018, he was the editor of Surface magazine.
Saving the shoes
The only things Bailey still has from that traumatic day in Sioux City are the shoes he was wearing. “Around 15 years ago, my grandmother gave me the shoes. She had kept them and they were in a ziplock bag with a note. I remember her giving them to me and I thought, ‘What a gift. That I have anything from that day. And it’s actually these white shoes.’”
SIOUX CITY -- The 30th anniversary of the crash of United Airlines Flight 232 will be remembered during a program Friday in Sioux City.
Interestingly, he never took them out of the bag until he brought them to his office. “I had always kept them in the ziplock bag. But the day we took them out, I remember feeling immediately – especially when I turned them over and saw dirt on the bottom of the shoes. I don’t know if that dirt is from the cornfields of Iowa or the runway or whether it was just from me playing in the backyard in Denver before we got on the flight. But it’s there. It’s caked in. And those shoes mean a lot to me. If there were a fire in my apartment, they’d be the first thing I grab.”
Surprisingly, Bailey said he doesn’t have a fear of flying; “I continue to enjoy travel because it makes me feel alive.”
To note the 30th anniversary of the crash, he said he’ll visit his mother’s grave in Lake Placid, New York.

Spencer Bailey, left, and Andrew Zuckerman are co-founders of the media company The Slowdown. Zuckerman interviewed Bailey for their podcast, "Time Sensitive."
Weston Wells“I do always want to take moments to remember, but I don’t want it to hang over my head every day. I don’t want it to be something that runs my life. I’ve moved on. But, in a way, I’ll never move on. I think I’ll always be processing it.
“If there’s something I think about most, it’s probably how grateful I feel to be alive every day,” Bailey said. “How I feel ... what a miracle it is to breathe, to wake up in the morning and be able to simply take a breath.”
The interview was recorded July 11 in The Slowdown’s New York City studio. To hear the podcast, click here.

From left: Briar Cliff students Dan Henrich, Monica (Kuennen) Burrows, Bill Borrows and Sue Claeys ride a tandem bicycle outside Alverno Hall in the loop. Bill Burrows, one of the first male students to enroll in Briar Cliff 50 years ago, and Kuennen met at the Sioux City school and later married. This picture was used in a 1970 Briar Cliff admissions brochure.
- Provided by Briar Cliff University

A rendering for the Brandeis department store proposed in the 1970s for downtown Sioux City is shown above. The land at Fourth and Jackson streets was cleared and a hole dug in preparation for construction, but the project later fell by the wayside. It's among a handful of high-profile projects in Sioux City over the years that never materialized.
- Provided by Sioux City Public Museum

Work takes place over Interstate 29 for the new approach to the new Siouxland Veterans Memorial Bridge in August 1979 in Sioux City. The $28 million bridge opened in 1981. The new bridge replaced the old Combination Bridge which was demolished after 85 years of service.
- Journal file photo

Fred Tinker, general manager of Big Soo Terminal, 4101 Harbor Drive, is silhouetted agaisnt a barge of molasses being unloaded on the riverfront in 1970. Mr. Tinker, who is cochairman of the Chamber of Commerce Waterways Committee, was one of the Port of Sioux City's most active supporters.
- Sioux City Journal file photo

The harbor of the Sioux City marina, which lies on a tract of land between the Isabella Street exit on Interstate 29 and the Combination Bridge, was completed in the fall of 1969. The City of Sioux City will have the responsibility of operating, maintaining and developing the marina which has a capacity for 450 boats. The city paid $115,000 and the Army Corps of Engineers paid $40,000 toward the project.
- Journal file photo by Ed Porter

Steel grating has replaced the original wooden planks and railroad tracks on the floor of Sioux City's Combination Bridge shown in this February 1971 photo. The bridge was so named because it originally carried a combination of traffic -- trains, horses and buggies and pedestrians.
- Journal file photo





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