By The Survivors Club Staff
July 22, 2009

In an astonishing fireball watched by millions of television viewers, United Flight 232 crashed in Sioux City, Iowa 20 years ago this week.

To this day, air safety experts can't believe anyone survived when the DC-10 cartwheeled down the runway, burst into flames and disintegrated. At 37,000 feet, one of the plane's engines experienced a catastrophic failure, which in turn destroyed the planes three hydraulic systems.  

For more than 40 harrowing minutes, the pilot and crew struggled to control the aircraft, finally bringing it down in Sioux City.  In the end, 111 people perished that day while 185 somehow survived.

One enduring symbol of the crash was a photo of a toddler rescued by an Air National Guardsman.  The child was Spencer Bailey.  He was only three years old.

Two decades later, he remembers the crash.  "Losing my mom wasn't easy and death isn't an easy thing," Spencer told KITV Channel 4 in Sioux City. Spencer boarded a plane bound for Chicago with his mother Francie and 6-year-old brother Brandon. Their mother, who tried to shield them in the plane, did not survive. The two boys were critically hurt and hospitalized in Sioux City for weeks. Now 20 years later, "coming back to Sioux City really opens my eyes about how far I've grown as a person and how far we've come as a family."

"They lost their mother and I was of the conviction that they would not lose their father," said Brownell says.

"Every ten years I try to take it as a graduation for me," Brownell says.  "Just say okay, that was ten years, made good progress. Now put together a plan for the next ten years."

For video of the interview with Spencer and his father, click here.