Boy, the picture of a $150 (probably smoked) ham overlying the last post is kinda disrespectful. Mods might want to watch that.
My grandparents lived in Maywood, IL, and we were having a weenie roast that afternoon in the forest preserve just to the east of ORD. (I was 15 at the time) My aunt Truelove and uncle Emil (who lived in the Toughy trailer park adjacent to the crash) were with us. We probably saw the takeoff, but the DC-10 made a lot less noise than most of the other hardware around at the time, so nobody was really looking, until there was a boom bigger than we were used to hearing (several years earlier) from all of the wonks from NAS Lakeview, and the military side of O'Hare "accidentally" breaking the sound barrier. This day, in addition to the noise, there was a big smoke cloud, and a fireball. Then we couldn't see much else. We finished our hotdogs, and tried to get out of the FP, but everything was blocked off. Got back to Maywood in the middle of the night with Truelove and Emil in tow. Found out two days later that they no longer had a house....