Posted: Jan. 20, 2007
We know from the horrifying events of 9-11 what airplane hijackings look
like now.
The only successful hijacking of a jet out of Milwaukee - 36 years ago
tomorrow - is almost quaint by comparison.
The hijacker, Garland J. Grant, who eventually tired of Cuba and
returned to the United States to serve time in prison, walks free in
Milwaukee again.
And the 59 passengers, who sat down to a steak dinner and cold beer in
Havana and even had a chance to shop, all returned safely and went about
their lives.
"It wasn't as petrifying as it would be today," recalled Harold Scheub,
a passenger and professor who teaches a popular course in African
storytelling at UW-Madison. "Nowadays you don't want to be hijacked at
all, because you're not going to make it."
There hasn't been a successful hijacking in the U.S. since four planes
were commandeered by terrorists on America's darkest day, according to
Lara Uselding, spokeswoman for the federal Transportation Security
Administration.
"Our job is to make sure these individuals do not get on the planes,"
she said.
It was easy for Grant, then 20 years old and a high school dropout, to
board Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 334 in Milwaukee on Jan. 22, 1971.
And he got on with a hatchet.
There wasn't much of a no-fly list back then. Grant had been arrested
two weeks earlier for threatening to blow up a railroad depot in
Milwaukee because they wouldn't hire him, news stories from the time say.
Soon after the Detroit-bound jet took off, Grant stood up with his
hatchet and a briefcase - which he said contained a bomb but actually
held a can of Right Guard deodorant - and demanded to be flown to
Algeria. He would later say he did it because he was mad about "racist
Milwaukee police" and that he wanted to help people in Africa grow food.
"It was scary. Hijacking was pretty new at that time," Scheub, now 75,
said in a recent telephone interview.
The Boeing 727 landed in Detroit to refuel but stayed in a more remote
area of the airport.
"It seemed like every police car in Michigan was there," Scheub said.
The pilot explained to the hijacker that the plane could not reach
Algeria, so Grant picked Cuba instead.
He refused to let anyone off the plane, and away they all flew to Cuba.
Scheub recalls it being unnaturally silent on the aircraft. A few
passengers vomited, but mostly people played cards, tried to read or
just kept an eye on Grant.
When the flight landed in Havana, soldiers in Castro-like fatigues took
Grant off the plane and whisked him away in a car.
The passengers were asked to present identification to Cuban officials
and then were led to a restaurant in the terminal to be fed by waiters
in white jackets.
Some passengers bought bottles of Cuban rum for $5 at an airport shop,
only to have it confiscated later by customs agents in Miami, where the
plane flew after it was cleared to leave. Scheub said the passengers
applauded the pilots when they lifted off Cuban soil.
For a while, Cuba was friendlier to people who hijacked their way there,
but later took a harder line. Grant spent several years in Cuban
prisons, where, he claimed, he was beaten and tortured.
He voluntarily returned to the United States in 1978. He told reporters
Cuba was hellish and racist, and he was anxious to go home.
"I think Wisconsin is the greatest state in the Union," he said then.
"Believe me, I'm all for the United States now. I'd even wear a Nixon
button."
Grant pleaded guilty to interfering with the flight crew and was
sentenced in federal court in Milwaukee to 15 years in prison.
Online records show that he was released in 1990.
I tried to reach him at the most recent address I could find, on N. 44th
St. His brother, Ross, said Garland didn't live there anymore. He took
my number and said he would give it to his brother, but I didn't hear
from him.
Ross said his brother, now 56, was doing OK and probably wouldn't want
to bring up the past again.
It's good he learned his lesson when he did. Anyone who tries a
hijacking now can expect to face a planeload of crazed passengers
fighting for their lives with pens, umbrellas, combs - whatever they can
lay their hands on.
Professor Scheub never did make it to Ann Arbor to visit family but
chose to return to Madison instead.
News travels fast. When Scheub showed up at his office in Van Hise Hall,
his colleagues had put up a banner: "Fly the friendly skies."
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