Stephen Colbert has had a decades-long successful career, however, the star has also dealt with devastating personal challenges throughout his life.

The Late Show with Stephen Colbert host is the youngest of his 10 siblings, and the family experienced a heartbreaking tragedy when the comedian was only 10-years-old. 

In 1974, his father James William Colbert Jr. and his brothers, Peter and Paul, died in a plane crash in Charlotte, North Carolina. 

The plane had traveled over South Carolina and Illinois before it crashed into a cornfield hill, only three miles away from its runway at Douglas Municipal Airport. 

The cause of the DC-9 plane crash was due to the pilot’s error of flying too low, which caused the plane to hit trees and quickly catch on fire.

According to the National Transportation Safety Board’s final report: “The flight crew’s lack of altitude awareness at critical points during the approach due to poor cockpit discipline in that the crew did not follow prescribed procedure.”

Sadly 72 of the 82 people on board passed away on that day. Foggy weather also led to the pilot not being able to track the altitude, per cockpit recordings.

James was not only a physician, but he also made history as the Medical University of South Carolina’s first Vice-President of Academic Affairs.

The effect of the crash on Stephen

In 2019, Stephen vulnerably opened up to Anderson Cooper about how that tragic loss deeply scarred him.

He shared: “There’s this big break in the cable of my memory at their death. Everything before that has got an odd, ghostly tone.”

The TV star revealed: “I was personally shattered and then you reform yourself in this quiet, grieving world that was created in the house. My mother had me to take care of – which I think was sort of a gift for her – a sense of purpose at that point. But I also had her to take care of. It became a very quiet house, very dark, and ordinary concerns of childhood kind of disappeared.”

He recently reflected on that specific interview with People and revealed: “Ten million people had seen [the interview] in the first 24 hours or something. I was very surprised because it’s not something that I had talked about publicly and it felt innate to my view of the world, but I didn’t realize that that experience would be so meaningful to other people, because so many other people experienced it. It seems obvious and a very simple thing to realize, but it did take me by surprise.”

Stephen struggled with the huge loss in high school, however, his emotional state worsened once he arrived in college.

He revealed to Oprah Winfrey: “I didn’t really feel the loss until I was in college. Then, I was in bad shape… I was just so sad about it.”

The host felt a “strange connection” to Kobe Bryant and his daughter Gianna, who both tragically perished in a helicopter crash in 2020.

He shared on his show: “I never got to meet him but I do feel a strange connection in this moment, one I wouldn’t wish on anybody.”

Stephen continued: “One of the terrible things about that shock and the heartbreaking unreality, nightmare quality of someone huge in your life who just disappears, the center of your love disappearing in that moment, is not knowing what happened.”

Stephen’s healing journey

Stephen’s mother Lorna Elizabeth Colbert remained strong for the whole family, with Stephen learning how to carry on thanks to his mother’s leading example.

He shared: “It was just me and mom for a long time, and by her example, I am not bitter. She was broken, yes. Bitter, no,” per GQ.

The TV star also turned to religion for help, and he learned to accept what had occurred.

Stephen added: “You gotta learn to love the bomb. Boy, did I have a bomb when I was 10. That was quite an explosion. And I learned to love it. So that’s why. Maybe, I don’t know. That might be why you don’t see me as someone angry and working out my demons onstage. It’s that I love the thing that I most wish had not happened.”

The Late Show with Stephen Colbert will air its final show on May 21. The show first premiered in 2015.