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The Arland D. Williams Jr. Memorial Bridge is located on the Potomac River between Arlington, Virginia and Washington, DC. Interstate 395 and U.S. Highway 1 cross on the 3 spans of the 14th Street Bridge Complex. The easternmost span was originally named the Rochambeau Bridge when it was built in 1950.
In 1983, following a 1982 airplane crash which struck it, the Rochambeau Bridge was renamed to honor Arland D. Williams Jr., who was a heroic victim of the disaster
Air Florida Flight 90
On January 13, 1982, during an extraordinary period of freezing weather, Air Florida Flight 90 took off from nearby Washington National Airport, failed to gain altitude, and crashed into the bridge, where it hit six cars and a truck on the bridge, killing four motorists. The plane then fell into the freezing Potomac River.
Only six of the airliner's 74 occupants were able to escape the sinking plane. One of these, later identified as 50-year-old Arland D. Williams Jr., repeatedly gave up a rescue line to help save others. The next day, The Washington Post described his heroism:
- "He was about 50 years old, one of half a dozen survivors clinging to twisted wreckage bobbing in the icy Potomac when the first helicopter arrived. To the copter's two-man Park Police crew he seemed the most alert. Life vests were dropped, then a flotation ball. The man passed them to the others. On two occasions, the crew recalled last night, he handed away a life line from the hovering machine that could have dragged him to safety. The helicopter crew - who rescued five people, the only persons who survived from the jetliner - lifted a woman to the riverbank, then dragged three more persons across the ice to safety. Then the life line saved a woman who was trying to swim away from the sinking wreckage, and the helicopter pilot, Donald W. Usher, returned to the scene, but the man was gone,"
- source: "A Hero - Passenger Aids Others, Then Dies", The Washington Post, January 14, 1982.
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