After Flight 3407 crash, comfort in shared tragedy
Crash victims' families share a common bond
Published: November 09, 2009, 7:15 am
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They spoke of family lost, of course — the brothers, sisters, sons, daughters, husbands, wives, aunts, uncles, mothers and fathers killed when Continental Flight 3407 plunged into Clarence in February.
But relatives who participated in a powerful memorial service Sunday morning for the crash victims also talked of having gained plenty of new family over the past nine months.
Nearly 600 people gathered under a tent in Forest Lawn for the service, which included the entombment of unidentified remains from the crash site.
"You lost 51 and you've got 600 back. That bond will be there forever," said Rebecca Gonzalez of Westchester County.
Gonzalez' brother, Ronald, a University at Buffalo graduate who was planning to move back to Western New York, was killed along with 48 other passengers and an unborn baby onboard and one person on the ground.
"You get to meet the family you've now inherited," Gonzalez said. "I lost my brother, and I miss him dearly, but these people personify the way he lived his life."
Some of the families have met before at the National Transportation Safety Board hearings and at a fundraising 5-kilometer run in June in honor of the victims.
But Sunday's service was the largest collection of relatives of Flight 3407 victims in one spot since the tragedy on Feb. 12.
"We've become very, very close. It's like meeting parts of your family you've never met before. You don't walk up and shake hands, you hug," said Marty Agius of Buffalo, whose brother-in-law, Kevin W. Johnston, perished in the crash.
There were plenty of hugs to go around, along with more than a few tears and some laughs, as well.
"Now we're seeing faces to names," added Agius's wife, Helen, Johnston's sister.
Organized by family members, the hour-long service included a poem, readings and musical performances — including two recordings by jazz guitarist and Flight 3407 passenger Coleman Mellett.
Chris Kausner, whose sister Ellyce died, gave a concluding talk in which he described his own apathy and cynicism since the crash.
He said he hoped to use the memorial service as an opportunity not simply to return to his normal self, but to become a better person, taking the best attributes of his sister and incorporating them into his own life. Kausner urged everyone to do the same.
Carrying pink roses, the participants walked from the tent to a crypt where two coffins of unidentified remains will be entombed.
One by one, they left the roses at the crypt site, which includes a large memorial plaque listing the names of the victims in alphabetical order.
Continental Airlines, which paid for travel of the victims' families for the memorial, originally proposed a service on the one-year anniversary of the crash.
But many families objected, and the date was changed to Sunday.
"People wanted to go into Thanksgiving and Christmas with this behind them. Knowing that there were remains that still weren't laid to rest was unsettling," said Mike Quimby of Bemus Point, whose father-in-law, Brad S. Green Sr., died in February.
Relatives flew from as far away as China, India and the Middle East and were greeted with one of Western New York's finest fall days. Conversations at Forest Lawn spilled over to a buffet luncheon Sunday afternoon at the Millennium Hotel in Cheektowaga.
Papa Michigan traveled from Jamaica to remember the Mossop family — Donald and Dawn and their son, Shawn — and Ferris M. Reid, Dawn Mossop's sister.
The four lived in Bloomfield, N.J., and were flying into Buffalo en route to Toronto for a vacation.
"It's tough to bring a closure to this," said Michigan, a cousin of Reid and Mossop. "This is something that has devastated the family. We all ask why, but God knows best. My pain that I'm feeling, I know that everyone feels the pain."
Being among other families who lost loved ones, he added, "helps lessen the hurt."
"It creates a different feeling, because we realize it's not just us alone," he said.
Michigan was accompanied at the service by Albert Stephenson of Wheeling, W.Va., brother of Reid and Mossop.
"It's truly a tragedy that should have never happened. We hope somebody's out there listening," said Stephenson.
Many of the families present have been pushing legislators to dramatically improve federal aviation regulations, particularly with regard to pilot training.
The current regulations require 250 hours of training for pilots; reformers want to see 1,500 hours, enough to create an automatic response in pilots to a crisis situation.
"We are hopefully confident they are going to change the laws, dramatically change them," said John Kausner, father of Ellyce or "Elly" as she was known to family and friends. "We're hopeful by the anniversary [of the crash] we'll have a bill passed."
Kausner said many of the families have known each other since a couple of days after the crash, when Chris Maurer, who lost his sister, Lorin A. Maurer, volunteered to set up a password-secure e-mail site just for Flight 3407 families.
"We were all strangers," he said. "From that day on, we began to communicate."
Kevin Kuwik, who was engaged to Lorin Maurer, said he deeply missed his fiancee but had gained strength from "my new 3407 family."
Kuwik, formerly of Lackawanna and now a resident of Columbus, Ohio, said the service made a powerful impression.
"I really felt it was the 51 victims speaking to us," he said.
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