It's no surprise this by-the-book pilot might try to tackle fame with intellectual rigor. After all, in January he informed air traffic controllers his jet had engine trouble and he was going to set US Airways Flight 1549 down in New York's Hudson River with the calm voice of a husband telling his wife he was taking a detour to the supermarket.
Breathe easy, America. Sully isn't that much of a geek.
Fame is the family's new dog, improbably named 18 months ago by an area guide-dog outfit that the Sullenbergers have been connected with for years. Fame the golden Lab, a very recent arrival, is under control. The other kind, not so much.
"Frankly, we're still trying to find the right balance between our family life and everything else," says Sullenberger, 58, who will keep the spotlight hot with the release today of his autobiography, Highest Duty: My Search for What Really Matters (William Morrow, 340 pp., $25.99). "It's a priority for me to get things right."
Sullenberger fixes his wife of 20 years with an unwavering gaze. Lorrie smiles, a range of emotions etched in the silence.
"I tell people Sully got a new job that day, one we hadn't prepared for," she says. "So we're learning as we go along. We talk about it as a family. We like to hike into the nearby hills, and that helps with the stress. It helps that people at least see us as ordinary, as one of them. But some days you just get tired."
In many ways, the Sullenberger home on a quiet cul de sac has typical touchstones. Family photos, Halloween decorations.
But there are inescapable nods to its celebrated resident. Mementos from the "Miracle on the Hudson" include a drawing of Flight 1549, bound for Charlotte from LaGuardia Airport, bobbing in New York's frozen waterway, as well as a framed cartoon — in which a passenger requests Sully as her pilot — signed by colleagues, one of whom scrawled "Sully for Prez!"
It has been a busy ride since Jan. 15, when Sullenberger saved all 155 souls in his care after geese crippled both of his jet's engines. The country was grappling with frightening news about the economy and being treated to a parade of greedy financial villains on TV. Enter a mild-mannered savior, and the emotional fireworks exploded.
Sullenberger returned to duty two weeks ago. With typical understatement, he describes that flight Oct. 1 as "another good day in the air." His new management title with US Airways will find him cutting back on his cockpit time so he can pursue airline safety issues for the company.
Sullenberger held off returning to the skies so he could reap a few rewards from his newfound celebrity, give a few speeches and write a book. But the events of that cold winter day refuse to fade.
"It was a shock to my very core," he says, recalling the instant the plane's engines died and the aircraft lost thrust. "There was a sense of dread in the pit of my stomach from what I felt, smelled and heard. The sound of finely balanced machinery being destroyed, like a tennis shoe thrown into a dryer, only much louder. It was the worst thing that had ever happened in my entire life. It was intense."
That's saying something for an Air Force fighter pilot long familiar with dicey predicaments. Saying something for a man whose father, a genial dentist who suffered from depression, shot himself in 1995 while in severe pain from complications after gall bladder surgery.
But Sullenberger did not let the intensity of that January moment cripple him. In fact, he says he remained stunned "for approximately 1.5 seconds after we lost both engines" — then immediately kicked into solution mode. "After recognizing the enormity of the situation and my body's reaction to it, (co-pilot) Jeff (Skiles) and I followed our manuals verbatim," he says. "We just did our jobs."
That was eight months ago, an epoch in our speed-of-Twitter age when a mere 15 seconds of fame is considered significant. And yet today the Sullenbergers still can't go out — whether to the local drugstore or a date-night dinner in nearby San Francisco — without attracting attention. Most people just want to say thank you. Or at least they try to.
"We often get people who start to talk but then just end up in tears and walk away," Lorrie Sullenberger says. "And Sully and I just look at each other and go, 'Whoa, where does that come from?'
"It's more than just that event on that day. They somehow relate that emotion to something in their lives. One person told Sully: 'I lost my job, my home; my father passed away and a friend died of cancer. I'd frankly lost my faith. And you, sir, gave it back.' It was not about that accident at all."
Sully nods quietly. "Something about this event was life-affirming. It reminded people of the potential for good that exists in all of us. That's why I wrote this book. I want people to see I'm just an ordinary guy who, having cultivated certain virtues, was able to perform an extraordinary act. I want people to see that in themselves."
Highest Duty is the tale of two Sullys. There's the North Texas teen whose mother saved to pay for flying lessons that led to the Air Force Academy and eventually the airlines, a high-achieving life lived perpetually in clouds.
Then there's the mundane reality. A man meets a woman he adores but she doesn't fancy him, though eventually Lorrie came around. A couple who ache to have children but are unable, later opting to adopt two baby girls, Kate and Kelly, now teens. A family nagged by financial worries as Dad struggles with cuts in pay and Mom works to launch a business helping women get fit, an outgrowth of her own battles with weight.
In other words, regular folks.
"I'm impressed by Sully and Lorrie's relationship," says Jeff Zaslow, the book's co-writer. "They're open and honest, and the girls are very respectful kids. They grapple with things we all can relate to. But at the same time Sully is truly an authentic person, and people want to embrace that."
Sullenberger's newfound fame probably could launch a career away from the cockpit. But in returning to flight duty, he perpetuates his own mythic status as a man of principle, says Billy Campbell, who was among the last passengers to climb off Flight 1549 and was the first, sitting next to Sully in a life raft, to thank the pilot for saving their lives.
"Here's a guy with a big book deal and yet he's going back to what he loves to do," says Campbell, a consultant in the entertainment industry, who got to know Sullenberger when the two testified at National Transportation Safety Board hearings.
"Sully always is the same: concise and articulate," he says. "We had a lot of things go right that day, but none would have mattered if he hadn't made the decisions he made."
Skiles is more blunt.
"I hate standing next to that guy because I always feel like a schmuck," he jokes. "Sully hadn't flown much before our return (to the cockpit together this month), and yet his first trip back was crisp and precise. I like to say that 5% of pilots are born to fly, 5% wash out fast, and the rest of us are in the middle. Well, Sully's at the tip of the spear."
Skiles and Sullenberger are hoping to use their respective moments of fame to draw attention to "the need for more professionalism in the cockpit," says Skiles, a question that has been in the news after crashes in which pilots were found bantering distractedly instead of observing strict codes of cockpit conduct.
"There is particular interest in this issue on the part of those running the Federal Aviation Administration," says Perry Flint, associate publisher of Air Transport World, which covers the industry. "The debate can really be driven by a genuine hero like Sullenberger."
The world continues to expect much of the man who saved Flight 1549. But sometimes Lorrie just wants to be with the white-haired guy who helps carpool the kids.
"I'm the emotional one, where Sully is stoic. So all this has its ups and downs," she says. "We're just an ordinary couple. We have good days and bad days. Some days he's a hero, and sometimes you want to thump him on the head."
Sullenberger lets out a rare laugh, then shakes he head.
"I told you," he says. "She keeps me down to earth."
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