The Aftermath And The Battle With Survivor’s Remorse
Gary Rossington, one of the band’s guitar players, had suffered two broken arms, a broken leg, a punctured stomach and liver. Allen Collins, another guitar player for the group, had cracked two vertebrae, and the cut to his right arm was so severe, that it almost required amputation. Billy Powell, the band’s keyboardist, received extensive facial lacerations and a broken right knee. In addition to his fractured ribcage, Artimus Pyle was treated for numerous abrasions and contusions. Gene Odom had been thrown from the plane and broke his neck, his skin badly burned and one eye blinded by phosphorus from a de-icing flare that had been aboard. Leon Wilkeson, their bass player, had arguably the most harrowing recovery; as he faced many internal injuries, dislodged teeth, and a broken left arm and leg, and his heart stopped twice on the operating table while doctors frantically struggled to keep him alive.
Van Zant, Steve and Cassie Gaines, Kilpatrick and the pilots were laid in a temporary morgue at a local high school gymnasium. Rudge chartered three planes for loved ones to identify the bodies. Among them were Lacy Van Zant, Ronnie’s Father, and .38 Special’s Guitarist Dan Barnes. Ronnie’s mother Marion refused to make the flight, after seeing a horrific plane crash of her own that killed 9 people. After claiming his deceased son, Lacy Van Zant went to visit the other members of the band at the hospital. The rest of the group had no idea at the time that they would never see the face of Ronnie again. When the group asked Ronnie’s father how he was, he simply replied “He’s fine. You all just better get some rest.” Dan Barnes recalls saying “This man had just been to the funeral home and seen his son dead and decided to keep that to himself for these guys to heal. I told him that it was the strongest thing I had seen a man do.”
For members Gary Rossington and Allen Collins, the weight of what happened seemed to push down on them the most. Rossington recalls saying “It was always weird for Allen and me because we were up front in the plane. It was Steve, and me, and Ronnie and I was in the middle of them. Then on the other side, it was Allen in the middle of Dean and Cassie. They all died but we didn’t. We always wondered why, you know.” The surviving members would grapple with this throughout their days.