Memorial services begin for victims of Flight 3407
It was a day of sad farewells and warm remembrances as the loved ones of the victims of Continental Flight 3407 gathered for memorial services across the region.
In Clarence, a town's communitywide grief took on a public face today at a standing-room-only service for one of its own.
More than 1,000 people packed the auditorium at Clarence Middle School to "celebrate the life" of Douglas Wielinski, who was killed when Continental Flight 3407 crashed into his house last week. His wife, Karen, and their daughter, Jill, who were also home miraculously survived.
They listened, wept and even laughed as friends and family remembered a man who was one part builder, one part veteran, one part historian and, above all else, a man who excelled at being a husband and father.
Karen Wielinski, in a remembrance read by family friend Chris Liede, recalled the first time she met her husband, then a young, curly haired softball player, and how their passion for each other endured decades later.
"He was one of the good guys," she said. "I can still look at him and feel the thrill I felt when I first saw that curly haired catcher."
It was a day for family, dozens of them, to show why Doug Wielinski was so special to them and why it hurts so much to lose him.
"If he's listening now," his daughter Jill wrote in a note read by friend Annmarie Dean, "I want him to know, I'll always be his little girl."
With flowers, photos and a wreath with 50 white roses — one for each victim of Flight 3407 — dotting the stage, Wielinski's brother Bill spoke of a selfless man who would disapprove of the attention given to his death.
And he also did his best to understand why his brother is gone. "God wanted him more in Heaven than he wanted him down here," he said, his voice cracking.
For the Town of Clarence, site of the plane crash and home to many who died in it, this was a time to grieve collectively, a time for friends and neighbors to come together.
"If there is anyone in this community who has not grieved, who has not shed a tear, who has not thought about their own mortality," said Monsignor Frederick Leising, a family friend, "such people are barely human."
In Buffalo at St. Joseph University Church, about 500 friends and loved ones of Beverly Eckert joined in prayer, song, poetry and tributes.
Eckert, who grew up in Amherst but was living in Stamford, Conn., had lost her husband, Sean Rooney, in the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center. They were on the phone together as the south tower, where he was trapped on the 105th floor, crumbled.
Determined to make sure such an attack could never happen again and that her husband did not die in vain, she became a tireless activist, demanding accountability and pushing for reforms.
Eckert was on her way to Buffalo to mark what would have been her husband's 58th birthday with family members and to present scholarships named in his honor when she died.
At her memorial service this morning, about 20 family members of Sept. 11 victims from New York, New Jersey, Michigan and here locally, took part in the ceremony. After the church bell rang 50 times, once for each victim of the crash, the Sept. 11 family members each lit candles in red votive candles arranged on white pedestals on either side of the altar.
Her family then took turns paying homage to Eckert. Her sister-in-law, Cynthia Blest, read a passage from the Book of Proverbs. Her brother, Ray Eckert, read a selection from a Martin Luther King Jr. speech about taking action.
Her sister, Margot Eckert, read aloud a poem she wrote about the many facets of her sister, from the spry little girl she had been who loved to play hide and seek and hopscotch, the artist and lover of music, especially Bach and Ella Fitzgerald, to the tireless advocate she became famous for being.
"Strong woman, my sister. Asking questions, getting answers. Pushing governments, prodding presidents, speaking justice," she read.
Her brother-in-law, Bill Bourque, also reflected on Eckert's relentless drive in the face of losing her husband. "In the aftermath of Sept. 11, she gained access to the powerful and became well known and well respected. We knew she was not in it for herself. She was in it so that this should never happen to anyone again. Because of her, our nation became a safer place. She was one of the main reasons the powerful moved at all, because nothing is more powerful than the simple, clear truth," he said.
Chamber singers from the Buffalo Academy of the Sacred Heart, where Eckert had gone to school, sang sweetly and mourners hugged each other warmly, wiping away each other's tears.
Kathleen Lynch, of Snyder, whose brother Michael was a New York City fireman who lost his life in the attack on the twin towers, said Eckert's death has hit other 9/11 family members hard.
"It's incomprehensible," Lynch said after the service. "Of course, it's a difficult thing. We have learned that every day is a day to be treasured. That's how you have to look at life. How you live it is really your choice. I think Beverly showed that's what she did. That's why she chose to do after suffering a terrible loss. She was a great inspiration to all of us."
At least two other services were held today.
Brad S. Green Sr., of Clarence, was memorialized at Eastern Hills Wesleyan Church in Amherst where he and his wife had worshipped. Up north in Niagara County, David Borner, who worked with Green at Kraft Foods, was remembered at a service in Pendleton Center United Methodist Church.
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