Dove release marks 40 years since Kansas City Hyatt skywalk collapse stole 114 lives
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1981 Hyatt walkway collapse
A look back at the Hyatt skywalk collapse that killed 114 people on July 17, 1981.
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Minister John F. Drew III told the crowd to remember their loved ones as he released white doves and they flew toward the Kansas City skyline — symbolic of a journey home.
Behind them stood an abstract sculpture of a dancing couple, names etched in its steel base.
Roughly 100 people gathered Saturday morning at the Skywalk Memorial Plaza, remembering their family, friends and neighbors whose lives were taken too soon when disaster struck at the Hyatt Regency Hotel on July 17, 1981.
Forty years ago, many of their loved ones never came home.
The ceremony — lasting roughly 30 minutes — was capped with the release of the doves, honoring those lost on one of Kansas City’s darkest days. The crowd clapped as they watched the birds — a gesture of honor to the thousands impacted by the tragedy.
The Hyatt was the place to be on a Friday night in 1981 — and hundreds of people had gathered in the lobby for that night’s tea dance on July 17 when devastation hit and 114 people were killed. More than 200 were injured.
“We are members of a club we did not want to join,” Brent Wright told the crowd.
He lost his mother and stepfather in the collapse. Wright is now the president of the Skywalk Memorial Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to honoring the victims.
“To those families and friends of the 114 people who died in the collapse ... we recognize the pain of your losses; we remember each of your loved ones by name,” Wright said. “They were remarkable people who left us way too soon. They left behind a lifetime of unfulfilled hopes and dreams.
“While we miss them dearly, we must remember that they live on within each of us.”
The Star, which had hired an engineer to evaluate the collapse, just days after the disaster reported a design change in the hotel’s skywalks. It was this untested structural change that investigators determined led to the devastation.
The original plan designed two skywalks to hang from the ceiling by six suspension rods. One was hung above the other. But because of difficulties fabricating that, it was changed to hang the second-floor skywalk from the fourth floor walkway — not the ceiling. That increased the stress on the box beams of the upper walkway.
Abbess Aemiliane, of the Sacred Monastery of St. Nina in Maryland, stopped in the Hyatt that night on her way over to Crown Center to meet a college friend for dinner. Her sister and now brother-in-law gave her a ride.
She paused to watch the tea dance for a few minutes. They were on the floor close to the band.
When the walkway collapsed at 7:05 p.m., the hotel erupted into chaos. And Abbess Aemiliane was pinned, her head between her knees.
On her right, she saw her sister was injured. On her left, bodies were smashed. She called out to her guardian angel.
People were trapped between shattered concrete and metal. The hotel parking garage became a temporary morgue.
The tragedy was one of the most deadly structural failures in U.S. engineering history.
Doctors told Abbess Aemiliane that if she lived, she would never walk again.
On Saturday, she stood leaning on a cane as she spoke with Vince Ortega, a retired Kansas City Police Department deputy chief. He was the first police officer to respond to the disaster.
Ortega had been with the department for five years by that time. But nothing in his training or the hundreds of prior calls he dealt with could have prepared him for what he saw that night, he told the crowd.
“I hope this memorial in some small way, provides you peace and comfort as it does me,” Ortega said.
National investigators later pointed to the structural change to the walkways as the cause of the collapse. The Star and its sister publication, The Kansas City Times, won a Pulitzer for general local reporting on the collapse and its causes.
“It’s taken a toll,” Charley Fisher, former Kansas City fire chief who was deputy chief on the night of the Hyatt disaster, told The Star later. “Thousands of peoples’ lives were changed forever.”
Those who survived were left with physical and emotional pain.
The 114 fatalities included military veterans, teachers, lawyers, homemakers, secretaries and business owners.
One child was killed: An 11-year-old girl who enjoyed Girl Scouts and playing sports and the guitar.
“I have these 114 names,” Abbess Aemiliane said. “I have them with me all of the time.”
Every Kansas Citian was either impacted or knows someone who was impacted by the tragedy, Mayor Quinton Lucas said. And they know where they were at the time of the collapse.
Kansas City will continue to grieve, he said.
“We will always grieve with you,” Lucas said, “Forty years from now, 80 years from now, when there’s a whole new set of folks to share the stories.
In 2015, a memorial site went up at 22nd Street and Gillham Road. The former Hyatt Regency is now a Sheraton hotel. It took almost 10 years to raise the $550,000 for the memorial and the maintenance.
The victims’ names are etched on the memorial.
“More than anything, we grieve with you and we love you all as we make sure that we remember all the beautiful lives that we lost 40 years ago,” Lucas said.
No one was prosecuted in the collapse, though two engineers lost their licenses. Lawsuits led to about $140 million in judgments and settlements.
At the time, Hallmark Inc. owned the building. After the collapse, the company’s president, Donald J. Hall, called the previous 18 hours “the darkest of my life.”
While the cause of the collapse was traced to the design flaws, Hallmark agreed to admit liability and to fund the settlements.
The Surfside condo, Champlain Towers South Condo, that collapsed in Miami-Dade County has reported 97 deaths with at least eight people still unaccounted for, according to the Miami Herald. Following its collapse, many recalled the dark day at the Hyatt that marked Kansas City 40 years ago.
“We can’t let today pass as we gather here without remembering the families, the friends, the loved ones in Surfside in Florida,” Wright said. “I want you to know you’re in our thoughts and our prayers as you struggle to cope with the loss of so many lives.”
This story was originally published July 17, 2021 at 1:05 PM.
