Merv Griffin gig, bad cold, kept writer off doomed jet

While watching a rehearsal on Chicago's Forum Theatre stage where his hit novel, "Do Patent Leather Shoes Really Reflect Up?" was less than a week from opening, John Powers got the phone call telling him what he had missed.

"It was my younger sister," Powers remembers. "She said, 'Your flight crashed.'"

Flight 191 had crashed, and Powers' name was on the passenger list.

"My mother was very upset because she thought I was on the flight," Powers says. "I was supposed to be on the flight."

It was the Friday afternoon of the Memorial Day weekend. Powers had to be in Los Angeles by Monday, where his friend, comedian Tom Dreesen, had helped Powers land a guest shot on "The Merv Griffin Show." Powers had just gotten back from a similar gig on the "Today" show in New York, and was fighting a bad cold. He knew that if he went to L.A. on a Friday night, he'd stay out late and his cold probably would be even worse by the time of his interview with Merv Griffin. Then he'd return home in terrible shape for his show's opening night.

"I was debating back and forth about whether I should take the flight," Powers remembers. "About 11 o'clock, my director said, 'Take the flight. Have a good time.'"

But Powers didn't want to be run down for his chance with Griffin and the busy week ahead.

"At 11:30, I called and canceled my reservation," Powers says.

Three-and-a-half hours later, everybody on that plane was dead.

"All the people who wished me good luck (for his appearance on 'The Merv Griffin Show') called me back that afternoon. It quickly became obvious I wasn't on the plane," Powers says.

Powers did know five people on that doomed plane. He had worked with Sheldon Wax, an editor at Playboy, who was on the flight with his writer wife, Judith Wax.

"I was doing a piece for Sheldon I never did finish," Powers says.

Merv Griffin hated to fly, and the crash injected a new level of fear for those afraid of flying. But Powers had no problem flying out to make the show.

"I took a DC-10 the next day to L.A.," he says matter-of-factly. His play opened later that week to rave reviews and ran for three-and-a-half years at the Forum in addition to Broadway and theaters across the nation.

The author avoids pondering the "what if" and even the "why not."

"It's not something I dwell on. Until you sent the e-mail, I didn't realize it had been 30 years," says Powers, who is 63 now, lives in Lake Geneva and does many professional speaking engagements through www.johnpowers.com in addition to his writing.

"I think we all get those kind of situations that aren't nearly as dramatic. You catch a yellow light or whatever. We all live by luck," Powers says, suspecting lots of people make decisions every day that keep them from dying. "It's just not as dramatic as Flight 191."