Amazing Grace

She forces herself to avoid her newspaper and television this time of year. She looks forward to hearing from the same man who calls her every Mother's Day, without fail.

I'm hesitant to telephone Grace Callaway. I'm not the voice Grace expects to hear. But, true to her first name, Ms. Callaway politely and eloquently speaks to me from her Apopka home. She tells me she appreciates that people still ask about her son, Chip, the youngest of her four children. She says talking about Chip helps her grieve since she can't speak to him directly.

Tomorrow marks 29 years since Grace could do that. John "Chip" Callaway, Jr., was 19, a brilliant tennis player and mechanical engineering student at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. Spring Break rolled around, and Chip -- who typically caught rides with friends to see his family in Miami -- decided to get there sooner by hopping aboard a Greyhound. It was a week before Mother's Day, 1980.

"Providence put him on that bus," Grace tells me on the eve of the anniversary of Chip's death. "It was the most horrific experience of my lifetime."

Chip -- along with 25 others aboard the bus -- plummeted to his death on May 9, 1980, when a harbor pilot crashed the Summit Venture into the Sunshine Skyway bridge in St. Petersburg. The ship's force destroyed the bridge, and sent the Greyhound and several vehicles 150 feet to the bay below.

Lynnwood Armstrong remembers the eerie weather as he crossed the Florida border from Alabama that morning. "It was just strange," he says.

Investigators later reported thunderstorms, zero visibility and winds approaching hurricane force at 7:33 a.m., the time of the crash.

Fate would spare Lynnwood from the accident. He had gotten off the bus to see his mother in Plant City a short time before the vehicle was to cross the Skyway. Lynnwood Armstrong and Chip Callaway had left together on the same Greyhound from Tuskegee that day.

Lynnwood remembers meeting Chip during a pickup basketball game their freshman year. They clashed at first, but became close for the next two years.

"We just clicked," Lynnwood says. "He was a great guy to leave this earth so early. We did everything together."

They would grow together as brothers. Chip would give Lynnwood pointers on the tennis court. Lynnwood would include Chip at family gatherings. While traveling home on the bus together, the young men talked about summer jobs. They fantasized about getting their first apartment together. They couldn't wait for their independence. It would be their last conversation.

Lynnwood never heard from Chip that afternoon, and called his buddy's mother, Grace, in Miami. Together they watched television news reports of what was being recovered from the bay.

"When I saw the bus come up out of the water, I knew," Lynnwood tells me. He vividly remembers Grace's scream on the other end just before he dropped the phone. He had been on that mangled bus just hours ago.

It would be an agonizing five days before Grace and her husband, John, would hear Chip's body was recovered -- the last of 35 victims. Chip had drowned. His family now had some semblance of relief.

"I never thought I'd rejoice when somebody would tell me they found my child," Grace decided. "It changed my whole outlook on tragedy. It's uniquely traumatizing to lose a child."

Chip admired Swedish tennis star Bjorn Borg and loved the music of the Bee Gees. And he teased his friend Lynnwood, the architect major who spent too many hours studying. Chip could have never foreseen the tradition that his mother and his college roommate would one day share: Lynnwood's annual Mother's Day phone call to Grace.

Grace says Lynnwood never misses a holiday, especially since Grace's husband, John, died in November 2007. John had never gotten over Chip's death. Grace says she and John looked to God -- rather than to each other -- for guidance following the loss of Chip.

She explains: "You can't expect your spouse to support you. They can't. You're both dealing with the same emotions and expect the same thing of each other."

Heart trouble caught up with John while he sat in his parked car. He and Grace had been married 64 years. Grace only hopes people won't forget about what happened 29 years ago tomorrow. She knows Lynnwood never will.

Lynnwood, now 49, works for the Florida Department of Transportation in Bartow. He's quick to point out the irony; he even inspected the Skyway bridge during its reconstruction in the mid-'80s. Lynnwood enjoys fishing from the pier that stands in place of the old bridge.

"I go there and reflect," he says.

Grace Callaway, however, hasn't been to the Skyway since her son's death.

"I can't drive that bridge," Grace states gently, without a hint of doubt in her voice. She says talking about it helps her heal. Writing does, too. Years ago Grace decided to send a letter to the Summer Venture captain, John Lerro, who the state had cleared of negligence in the accident.

"I wished him well," she says. Lerro died of multiple sclerosis in 2002.

Grace evokes a quote from Mother Teresa regarding what she'd say to God if given the opportunity: "You've got some explaining to do."

She fights to catch her breath as we share a laugh over the phone. She wonders: "People who have no hope, I don't know how they could make it."

Happy Mother's Day, Grace.


-P.F.