SLC International Airport, Salt Lake City, Utah, one of the first things I saw the morning Matthew Shepard died. 

It was a route I'd flown countless times.  SLC-MSP.  Salt Lake City to Minneapolis.  I thought nothing of it.  

The day before, my husband suddenly decided to fly home to Wisconsin ahead of me a day early, leaving me unexpectedly solo.  At the departure gate at the Salt Lake airport, my mother left me with a kiss, a hug and the normal goodbyes, the end of one more journey home to see family and friends and places left behind.  The terminal, the gate, the airport, all familiar, the many scenic photographs of Utah, golden aspens, Delicate Arch, ski runs, down the sloping corridor to where the Northwest Airlines flights boarded.

Early October.   Autumn was in her splendor in the Wasatch.  Timpanogos had a dusting of snow.  Still it was not yet cold, more the feeling of a late summer day in the West, one of those sparkling mornings where it seemed like winter would hold off forever, light clouds, blue sky.  Ah, home would feel good.

Flying unusually alone, I was in the second row of Coach Class on the aisle, with no seat ahead of me, and a young woman next to me who'd never flown.  In my many years of flying, domestically and abroad, I'd never been afraid, always looked forward to the adventure of the flight or taken it in stride, but never been afraid.  The young woman next to me in the center seat was visibly anxious, and quickly volunteered it was her first flight.  I was determined to minimize her anxiety, make it a pleasant experience for her. 

Take-off seemed normal, and we quickly bumped over the lofty Wasatch mountains ringing the Salt Lake Valley en route to southwestern Wyoming.  I knew the route by heart, had many times looked down and picked out towns I knew, places from my childhood, familiar landmarks.

Just over the Wasatch we made an alarming sudden dive without explanation from the cockpit, and an equally alarming reduction in speed.  Whatever it was, it wasn't normal.  My seatmate anxiously asked me if this was normal, and not wanting to her to be afraid, I assured her everything was fine.  

It clearly wasn't.

We hugged the ground like cropdusters as I saw towns from my childhood slide beneath me.  Evanston.  Rock Springs.  We were much too low.  I could count the sagebrush underneath us.  Much too slow.

Women were fingering rosaries.  Flight attendants were strapped into jumpseats.

Moments later, we regained normal altitude and airspeed.  

I exhaled.

Whatever it was, I thought, it's over now, we're fine, no worries, no problems.  Where's that beverage cart?

Again, we dropped.  Sharply.  Flight attendants were white.

A voice came from the cockpit.  Were there any other pilots on board?

What, they didn't have enough up front?

I quickly grabbed the phone on the seatback closest to me and called my husband, who had been a pilot.  Discreetly as I could without alarming my seatmate, I asked him what he thought.  He speculated on whether we'd lost an engine.   I told him we were cropdusting.  "Probably lost cabin pressure." 

Again, a voice came from the cockpit, with an announcement.  "They're going to make an emergency landing in Rapid City," I told my husband.

Still, I watched out the windows.  We were hugging Interstate 80, and would have to make a sharp northern turn soon if Rapid City was our intended destination, but no turn came.  Slow, steady, we hugged the ground, and I-80.  There was Rawlins.

"They can't be taking us to Rapid City," I told my husband (God knows how much I was paying for that plane-to-ground call to calm my nerves).  "We must be going to Denver."

"Well, ladies and gentlemen, for those of you who haven't seen the new Denver International Airport, I have a surprise for you.  We're landing at DIA."

Laramie.  We were hugging, hugging, hugging the ground.  I saw split-rail fences, snow fences, barbed wire, sagebrush, barbed wire, split-rail, sagebrush.  A sea of sagebrush.  Fences.

 Sagebrush.  Can be beautiful, or brutal.  Likely the last thing Matthew Shepard saw before he closed his eyes one last time.

Why had this happened to us?  I was born here, I'll die here, sagebrush of Wyoming, I thought as we first dropped north of the Wasatch. 

Never afraid of flying in my life.  Never.

What seemed like a lifetime later, we landed in Denver, rushed off the plane to find other ways home, home to loved ones, open arms, hugs, love, safety.  

Safety.  That which we took for granted.

I looked up at a television screen in the gate.  News was breaking.

******* 

A young man had been found, tied to a fence in the sagebrush outside Laramie, beaten, and nearly dead.

A young man.   Sagebrush.  Laramie.  

A young man.  Fence.  Sagebrush.  Laramie. 

******* 

Numb I was.  Numb.  We'd been so low to the ground.  So slow.  Amazing no one had seen him.

******

My heart ached.  Someone thought he was a scarecrow, I'd heard.  Hate crime, I heard later.  

Dead, I heard later.

*******

Not home.  Not warm.  Not safe.

The safety we take for granted.

The October day I won't forget. 

Matthew Shepard was born December 1, 1976, in Casper, Wyoming.  He was a 21-year-old University of Wyoming student when he was tortured and brutally murdered the night of October 7, 1998, tied to a split-rail fence and left to die.  He was found eighteen hours later and taken to Poudre Valley Hospital in Fort Collins, Colorado, where he died a few days later on October 12, 1998, of severe head injuries.

None of us can imagine what Matthew's last hours or days of life were like.

In those moments I find myself afraid, I think of Matthew.

On Thursday, October 8, 2009, eleven years after Matthew's death, the U.S. House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly, 281-146, to give final House passage to the Defense Spending Bill that included the Matthew Shepard Act, which added gender, gender identity, sexual orientation and disability to the federal law prohibiting crimes motivated by hatred or minority bias.

Matthew's mother, Judy Shepard, has been a tireless champion for hate crimes legislation since Matthew's untimely death that October day in 1998.  

On the web:  The Matthew Shepard Foundation

Judy Shepard addresses the National Equality March on Washington, October 11, 2009:   from CNN Video

 In an early 2009 video, Judy Shepard appeals for support of legislation to end hate crimes more than ten years after her son, Matthew's, death.