Elizabeth Vincelette of Virginia Beach, VA
For her fourth birthday Tuesday, Annie Vincelette got a Rapunzel costume and a copy of the movie “Sleeping Beauty.”
Her best present, though, was a fairy-tale ending to her father’s brush with death that day, 20,000 feet above the Iraqi desert.
Lt. Chad Vincelette, 32, a Virginia Beach native and Navy F-14 fighter pilot, was heading back to the carrier Kitty Hawk after a bombing run when a mechanical failure forced him and a crewmate to eject.
A few hours later, Air Force rescuers found Vincelette shivering and disoriented in the dark desert of southern Iraq.
Vincelette told his wife, Elizabeth Vincelette, 32, a teacher, that he judged his distance to the ground in the inky night by watching where the jet hit the sand and exploded.
Though both grew up in Virginia Beach, the couple met at the University of Virginia. Chad graduated from Kempsville High School, Elizabeth Vincelette from Green Run.
Sitting in her sunny living room Thursday, with cats and a dog dozing and children clambering about, Elizabeth Vincelette recounted her husband’s story almost like it was the plot of a movie.
As if mechanical problems weren’t enough, her husband - call name “Vinny” - had problems with his parachute, she said. When the chute opened at 13,000 feet, the lines were crossed. His hard landing left him dazed but uninjured.
He managed to put on the thermal underwear and wool hat from a survival kit his mother-in-law had given him for Christmas. Though it seemed only minutes, he said, hours later an Air Force helicopter crew rescued him and the jet’s radio intercept officer, who had landed too far away for them to communicate.
Elizabeth Vincelette chuckled about her husband making it into the club of fighter pilots who have had to eject. But her eyes moistened slightly talking about what he was thinking when he abandoned the plane.
“He told me that all he could think of as he ejected was he didn’t want to die on his daughter’s birthday,” she said.
Elizabeth Vincelette, their 6-year-old son, Jackson, and Annie got the news as soon as they pulled into the driveway after Annie’s birthday dinner.
Chad’s father, Paul - a former A-6 pilot - had gotten the phone call while they were out and rushed over with the news. “He said, ‘Chad’s OK.’ Then he started crying,” she said.
Annie knows what happened.
“He crashed,” she said shyly. But she said it with a smile.
Jackson cried a little, Vincelette said, but pride quickly took over. Within hours, he was telling everyone he knew about his dad’s adventure; she sent a note to school with him so his first-grade teacher would know he wasn’t making it up.
“Mom, tell Michael that my dad’s jet is the most famous jet in the world,” Jackson said Thursday as he and his friend raced in and out of the house in Kempsville.
She reminded Jackson of a downed F/A-18C jet from the Kitty Hawk, whose pilot was missing. Vincelette said she feels guilty thinking about other Navy spouses getting the worst news, the kind delivered in person, in uniform.
She can’t fathom why her family has been spared.
But she thinks about her own father, who died a few years ago. He flew P-3s in the Navy. Chad has told her that he sometimes talks to her dad when he’s flying.
And though it strikes her as hokey to talk about guardian angels, she can’t help but wonder.
“I wonder if my dad was watching out for him,” Vincelette said.