PORT ANGELES — After more than a quarter-century, Don Zozosky of Port Angeles finally got to shake the hand of the man he helped locate bobbing in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.
“It’s kind of funny this all happening on Memorial Day weekend,” said Zozosky, who spent four years of active service in the Air Force and is now a retired postal worker.
On Saturday, Zozosky finally met Peter Goldstern 34 years after the Air Force transport plane crew on which Zozosky was serving located the pilot, who was forced to ditch his single-engine plane in the Atlantic’s frigid waters 600 miles from England when a part malfunctioned.
On Dec. 22, 1979, Goldstern — now 72 and a retired University of Washington alumnus who makes his home in Gruyeres, Switzerland — was delivering a newly built Mooney M20 aircraft from Newfoundland to Ireland when the plane’s oil pressure fitting blew out.
“There was a bang,” Goldstern said. “Then the oil pressure dropped to nothing.”
Luckily, the C-5 Galaxy transport plane on which Zozosky was crew chief was only about 45 minutes from where Goldstern went into the drink.
His mayday call was relayed through a Canadian rescue coordination center in Halifax.
Zozosky said his crew, on a mission from California to England, was redirected to search for Goldstern.
After seeing the flares Goldstern had shot into the air, they found him bobbing in 23-foot seas in a survival suit.
Zozosky’s plane made multiple low passes over the water, he said, once getting down to 500 feet.
On the final pass, the crew pushed inflatable life rafts out of the plane, Zozosky said.
After spending hours in a raft, Goldstern said he was eventually rescued by a passing Russian weather ship.
“I wasn’t in the water for a long time, but it was long enough,” Goldstern said Saturday.
Zozosky, 54, said he learned Goldstern’s name from letters he received the Russian ship after his crew was decorated for helping save the pilot’s life.
But the two didn’t begin communicating “until after the Internet was invented,” Zozosky said.
The men had tried to get together a few times, but bad weather always got in the way, Goldstern said.
This time, however, Goldstern, a native New Zealander, happened to be in the area — in Oregon, to be exact.
He was on his way to vacation in Alaska in his ultra-light plane and contacted Zozosky about finally meeting.
Zozosky, a California native who has lived in Port Angeles for the past 30 years, and his wife, Micki, hosted Goldstern over the weekend before the pilot took off for Ketchikan.
But before he left, Goldstern said there was something he wanted to say to his host:
“Thank you.”
Reporter Jeremy Schwartz can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5074, or at jschwartz@peninsuladailynews.com.
News Editor Margaret McKenzie contributed to this story.
