Kettering woman ‘blessed’ to have changed Ft. Lauderdale airport plan

Kettering resident Betty Harman and her 12-year-old daughter Hanna changed flights and flew out of the Fort Lauderdale airport hours earlier than planned Friday, missing the shooting rampage there later in the day. CONTRIBUTED

Kettering resident Betty Harman and her 12-year-old daughter Hanna changed flights and flew out of the Fort Lauderdale airport hours earlier than planned Friday, missing the shooting rampage there later in the day. CONTRIBUTED

Kettering resident Betty Harman said her “phone was pretty hot” with texts and calls when she and her 12-year-old daughter Hanna landed at Dayton’s airport around 1:30 p.m. Friday after spending the week with her uncle in Fort Lauderdale.

Harman said only then did she learn about the shooting at the airport they had left hours earlier. Harman started crying and said later she was so thankful they weren’t involved, because she had originally intended to take a 1:30 flight out of Fort Lauderdale. The shooting happened between noon and 1 p.m.

“It’s by the grace of God that something just told me to change this to a morning flight,” Harman said. “I feel grateful and blessed … because Hanna and I would have been in that airport.”

Harman said she wavers between trying to prepare and protect her kids, versus telling them too much and scaring them.

“And then you think, what would you do if it was just you and your 12-year-old?” Harman said. “We talked about it afterward, and I said we would have dropped the suitcase, and we would have stayed together and run to wherever we could get to.”

Harman said coming back earlier allowed her daughter to get to Friday night cheer practice after she missed two sessions early in the week. But she almost didn’t make that decision.

“Now you have all this happening, and I know God must have intervened,” she said. “It’s so surreal what could have been.”

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