TWO WINGS AND A PRAYER: This hero was born to fly

Chesley Burnett Sullenberger wanted to fly from the time

he was a boy, watching fighter jets roar over his small hometown in Texas.

After a long career as a commercial pilot, Air Force fighter pilot,

accident investigator and safety expert, Sullenberger, 57, faced his own

emergency yesterday, landing US Airways Flight 1549 on the Hudson River.

As the last passengers climbed onto ferry boats, Sullenberger walked the

entire plane, twice, making sure that no one was left behind, Mayor Michael

Bloomberg said at a news conference last night.

"I'm not surprised at all," said Doug Hoover, 58, who was a high school

classmate of the pilot in Denison, Texas. "This is his first chance to be a

hero, but he always had it in him. He would have gone down with the ship, if

that's what it took."

Denison was home to an Air Force jet training base.

"We grew up with jets buzzing around and he was in love with that from the

get-go," Hoover said.

Sullenberger took private lessons and earned his private pilot's license

when he was a junior in high school, said Jim Russell, 57, another classmate

who played with Burnett in the junior high and high school marching bands.

"Occasionally, he would take me up in a plane," Russell said. "We would fly

around and look at everything."

Sullenberger, known then as Burnett, was a committed kid with a sharp mind

and strong sense of duty, his friends said. He could cut it up with the rest of

them, Hoover said, but he remained focused on one thing.

"He didn't want to do anything to hurt his chances to get into the Air

Force Academy," Hoover said. "He never got into any mischief whatsoever."

His father was a dentist and his mother taught elementary school. Both

parents encouraged his flying dreams, Hoover said.

He passed the academy's rigorous entry requirements in 1969 and headed to

Colorado Springs.

Commissioned four years later as an Air Force officer, Sullenberger, who

now goes by the nickname "Sully," soon developed an interest in accident

prevention. A fighter pilot flying F-4 Phantom II jets, he served as a member

of the U.S. Air Force mishap investigation board.

In 1980, he joined US Airways and began a long civilian career as a pilot,

investigator, researcher and entrepreneur, founding Safety Reliability Methods,

a company that helps businesses improve their safety.

Sullenberger now lives in Danville, Calif., where he is a visiting scholar

at the University of California at Berkeley's Center for Catastrophic Risk

Management, which studies safety, infrastructure, and preparedness in accidents

and natural disasters.

Sullenberger was the right person to guide passengers through a crisis,

Karlene Roberts, a friend who co-directs the center told the Contra-Costa Times

of Walnut Creek, Calif.

"I can imagine him being sufficiently in charge to get those people out,"

Roberts said. "He's got that kind of personality, which is to his credit."

A few minutes after takeoff yesterday, Sullenberger told air traffic

control that he had experienced a "multiple bird strike," said Bill McLoughlin,

a union representative at LaGuardia Airport for the National Air Traffic

Controllers Association. Both engines quit.

Passengers said Sullenberger told them to brace for impact, then landed on

the water.

"He was phenomenal," said passenger Joe Hart, 50, of Massapequa. "He landed

it. I tell you what - the impact wasn't a whole lot more than a rear-end

[collision]. It threw you into the seat ahead of you."

While politicians and passengers lauded Sullenberger as a hero yesterday,

his wife fielded calls from reporters.

Reached by phone, she said simply that she was proud of him.

Staff writers Eden Laikin and Andrew Strickler and The Associated Press

contributed to this story.

NUMBER OF PEOPLE ON BOARD

155

WATER TEMPERATURE

36 DEGREES

ESTIMATED NUMBER TREATED

78

NUMBER DEAD

0