Randolph White lived in obscurity in Williamsburg County for 72 years until fame came crashing in with a wayward F-35 fighter jet that landed less than a half-mile from his house...
We are all familiar with the jet stream as a strong flow of air at very high altitudes, but there is another flow of air at a much lower altitude that has become widely-known recently as the jet scream.
This newly-notable phenomenon is the sound of Randolph White, who lived in obscurity in Williamsburg County for 72 years until fame came crashing in with a wayward F-35 fighter jet that landed less than a half-mile from his house.
Social media was all atwitter with the cause and whereabouts of a multi-million dollar jet whose pilot ejected and afterward non one seemed to know where and how the aircraft landed - except Randolph.
He was standing outside his rural house near Bartell’s Crossroads, when he heard a screeching sound overhead, followed by a large boom. When federal authorities finally located the crashed jet, a TV news reporter wandered over to the nearest house, which happened to be Randolph’s, and asked what happened. The rest is hilarious history.
Randolph gave an interview that went viral all over the world by mimicking the sound of the jet with a now-heralded scream. “It sounded like this,” he explained. “And to repeat it, you gotta get all the way down in your diaphragm and let it out.”
His “EEEEEEEEYOOOWWWW” lasted about 15 seconds and it was his 15 seconds of fame that had media from all over descending on his house to repeat it, including charleston.com.
He had also described in the original interview how he was in the bathroom “talking a shave” when the jet came swooping overhead, and that in itself had heads being scratched everywhere what exactly he meant or almost said something else.
Randolph wasn’t looking to become a celebrity, but a jet doing a nosedive 500 yards from his living room and a way to replay the day enabled him to cash in on the crash as the biggest thing in rural South Carolina since the Lizard Man.
“My wife said after I did about 15 interviews that people should be payin’ for this,” he said, “so she became my manager.”
Now Randolph has a thriving cottage industry in autographs and t-shirts, which read “I survived the F-35”.
