That shoot down happened 35 years ago. I was a crazy and wild 20 something then and was planning the 'wedding-of-the-century', my own. I'll never forget the horror of getting the news about that airliner. A few short years prior to that, back in college, I had a close female Persian friend who was a doctoral student in geology. She was a riot! A real partier, just like the rest of us in our group. We had so much fun together, cruising the bars in town on the weekends. But then she returned back to Iran and I haven't heard from her since. So many drastic changes there, ya know?


Anyway, I thought of her when that plane went down. Everyone on it was a 'Nadia' to me. I felt devastated when it happened.