By Jacob Sloan
neighborsgo Assistant Editor

Joan Kollmansberger of Garland left her husband’s office at Ragsdale & Kollmansberger CPA firm on Jan. 15 with some stomach pains, but now she knows it could have been a whole lot worse.

Her husband, Bob, had just told her as she left that a U.S. Airways flight from New York had crash-landed into the Hudson River, but that, because everything had gone just right, 155 on board survived and were being pulled from the floating plane by ferries.

The news didn’t faze Joan at the time. Her son, former Garland resident Mike Kollmansberger, had been in New York for a company awards dinner with his brother-in-law, but she thought he was already back in South Carolina.

It wasn’t until she arrived home to check messages that she felt like something might be amiss. Among several messages on her answering machine was one mysterious recording of a few seconds of background noise followed by a click.

Soon after, her son’s wife, Aimee, called to tell her that her son had, in fact, been on Flight 1549 that morning. Both he and his brother-in-law were now safe on a ferry.

The phone call brought this national news event close to home for the Garland mom.

"That was a shock," Joan Kollmansberger said. "Thank God we didn't know when it was going on that he was on the plane."

Mike Kollmansberger and his two sisters grew up in Garland, and all three attended Lakeview Centennial High School. Upon graduation, he attended Richland College in Northeast Dallas and the University of North Texas in Denton.

Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger, originally from Sherman, was the pilot of Flight 1549.

After speaking to her daughter-in-law, Joan called her two daughters to tell them what had happened. Her older daughter, now Stacy Butler of Fort Worth, was not aware of the plane ditching, but was relieved to hear her brother was safe. The youngest sibling, Laura Owens of Wylie, refused to accept it.

"She said, 'No! I’ve just been watching that. I can't believe that,'" Joan said.

By the time Joan called her husband, he had heard from Mike.

Always a jokester, Mike Kollmansberger had to convince his dad that he had really been on that flight and told him several times before it finally sunk in that it was no prank.

"I’m OK," Mike said. "I’m just cold."

Jacob Sloan can be reached at 469-330-5689 or jsloan@neighborsgo.com. You can also find him on neighborsgo.com at neighborsgo.com/jacob.

Editor’s Note
Mike Kollmansberger, who lost his cell phone and laptop computer in the crash of Flight 1549 and took a short vacation upon returning home, has been unavailable for comment. Watch the neighborsgo blog and neighborsgo.com for updates on his personal account.

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