The Reliable Source (original) (raw)

A Close Call in Costa Rica

Washingtonian Ben Eisendrath is still thanking his lucky stars after he treated his parents, brother and sister-in-law to a very expensive vacation in Costa Rica last month, only to have it end with a plane crash in the jungle. Miraculously, everyone survived.

"What are the odds?" the 31-year-old America Online product manager told us yesterday. The trip was a belated birthday present to his father, Charles Eisendrath, the director of the University of Michigan Journalism Fellows program, who turned 60 in October. Ben, a bachelor who lives in Adams-Morgan, arrived in Costa Rica on Dec. 13 with his dad, his 58-year-old mom, Julia, his 29-year-old brother, Mark, and Mark's 25-year-old wife, Eliza, all Michigan residents.

After a pleasant week of fishing for mahi-mahi and sailfish near the Costa Rican town of Nosara, the party departed on Dec. 20, climbing into a chartered twin-engine Cessna bound for San Jose, 220 miles southeast. Seconds after takeoff, the plane veered sharply into the trees, then hit the ground and caught fire. The pilot and his five passengers -- bloodied and bruised, with Julia suffering a broken right leg -- managed to escape the burning plane. Local residents rushed to the crash site and ferried the Eisendraths and Costa Rican pilot Alexis Rojas to a nearby hospital.

Back in the States, Ben's mom underwent surgery and was released from the hospital in Ann Arbor just this week. As for Ben, a gash on his forehead required nine stitches. "I'm not horribly disfigured," he said. "I have a cool new scar on my forehead."

Ben returned to work at AOL a mere two days after the crash -- mainly to pick up the remains of his luggage, mostly bloody clothes in a garbage bag (his suitcase was destroyed) that American Airlines delivered there. The airline somehow managed to lose it on the flight from Miami. Nevertheless, he insisted: "Aside from bashing up my family, I would do it all over again. It was the best trip we've taken. In fact, I reserved the house where we stayed again for next year."

THIS JUST IN . . .

* George W. Bush communications guru Karen Hughes joined the Republican scouting party casing the joint at the White House yesterday. Hughes met with President Clinton's communications director, Loretta Ucelli, and sized up her West Wing office. No word on whether Hughes plans to repaint Ucelli's lair, known as the "Pink Palace."

* The Last Pajama Party: On their final weekend at Camp David, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and her soon-to-be-unemployed spouse are hosting Cabinet officials Friday for dinner and a sleep-over, followed by Democratic senators on Saturday.

* We hear that the Bush-Cheney administration's favorite Washington correspondent, the New York Times's Adam Clymer, is on medical leave recovering from major-league, big-time back surgery, and probably won't be dancing at any of Dubya's balls. Clymer didn't return our phone call yesterday.

* Our Post colleague, Civil War buff Hank Burchard, is among the alert readers who recently discovered a serious historical error in Stephen Ambrose's latest blockbuster, "Nothing Like It in the World: The Men Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad 1863-1869." On Page 292, the superstar historian writes that "George B. McClellan's uncoded orders were captured by the Confederates before the Battle of Antietam, giving Robert E. Lee a chance to read them." It turns out that Ambrose got it exactly backward: It was the Union army that captured Lee's orders. A chastened Ambrose told us his foul-up will be fixed for the next edition of the book, which has already been through nine printings. "I have no idea why I made this mistake," he said. "I am embarrassed to the tips of my toes."

"I only have on one layer of makeup. I'm incognito."

-- Katherine Harris, to a Target store cashier who recognized her as the much-maligned Florida Secretary of State. Harris's interview with ABC News airs tonight.