JJ Dodson still wears her husband Spike's wedding ring around her neck nearly 23 years later.
"You have no idea until it's happened to you, what it does to you," Dodson said. "It's like your whole life is gone."
On Aug. 8, 1993, Spike Dodson and his wife JJ were in Aspen visiting his sister and her family.
"They wanted to go up in a hot air balloon," Dodson said.
Two hours later, their balloon hit a power line severing the basket from the balloon and all six people onboard were killed. It was the deadliest hot air balloon tragedy in American history until 16 people were killed Saturday morning in central Texas.
"You don't believe it is the first thing," Dodson said.
She could not believe her husband whom she describes as athletic and adventurous was gone. For the next year, Dodson says she could not just set one place setting at the dinner table.
"I just set him a place because it was nighttime, I always did it," Dodson said. "It was a form of denial. I think that you hope that it was a bad dream."
Dodson says she relives her nightmare every time she sees a hot air balloon.
"If I see a hot air balloon, I put my head down," Dodson said. "If I'm driving, I stop."
For a time after Spike's death, she pushed for a change in legislation to require more training for hot air balloon pilots.
"And, they said there wasn't enough accidents to warrant having any more (training), I thought what an answer," Dodson said.
Now with the tragedy in Texas, Dodson says she feels a strange, unwanted kinship with the victims' families.
"All those people they have to go through that what I went through. I wish I could help them," Dodson said. "I wish I could take part of the pain for them."
Nearly 23 years later, she still feels her pain.
"You never get over it. It won't get any easier, but it always be there," Dodson said.
Spike Dodson was the second husband she lost in an air accident. Her first husband died shortly after World War II when his plane collided with another one.
