Flight 3407 pilot is remembered as a loving husband and father
Renslow family keeps focused, hopes hearings lead to changes
TAMPA, Fla.—On the day after the hearings into the crash of Continental Connection Flight 3407 ended in Washington, D. C., the widow of Capt. Marvin D. Renslow, the pilot of the doomed turboprop aircraft, paid a visit to her husband’s grave.
“I just went out to sit with him for a couple of hours,” Sandy Renslow told The Buffalo News, tears streaming down her face.
“I feel him all around me, all the time,” she said, having just returned from the cemetery.
Three months after the worst U. S. airline disaster in more than seven years and with fresh reminders everywhere in the last week because of the federal hearings, Sandy Renslow and the couple’s two children, Tyler, 18, and Kaley, 12, are still grieving the pilot’s loss.
They chose not to attend the National Transportation Safety Board hearings, nor did they watch or read any of the coverage of the testimony that often faulted the Colgan Air pilot for a litany of alleged instances of bad decisionmaking and poor judgment, including: failing to pay attention to the speed of the airplane and, upon being alerted to a stall, pulling back on the yoke to point the plane’s nose up instead of down.
“We never went there, never listened to [the hearings]. We concentrated on work and activities,” Sandy Renslow said in the only interview she has had with the media.
Even though she and the children did not watch or read anything about the hearings, she knows that many people are pointing blame at the man they knew as a husband and father.
“We’re not going there,” Sandy Renslow said of those who are blaming her husband of 22 years.
Instead, she and her son have come to embrace the belief that commercial air travel will become safer because of lessons learned from the crash of Flight 3407, which killed all 49 people aboard the two-engine commuter plane and one person on the ground Feb. 12 in Clarence Center.
“We’re not blaming anybody. We’re not suing anybody. It happened for a reason. It’s more important that they’re learning things they never knew,” Tyler Renslow said. “It’s totally going to change cold-weather flying. Now they have more knowledge of what could happen.”
They also know that such changes come at a tremendous cost. “I’d like people to know that the other families are in our prayers and that we have asked members from our church to pray for them,” said Sandy Renslow, who works as a media technical assistant at a local elementary school. “We know their hearts are broken like ours.”
The family has tried to concentrate on happier moments, such as Tyler’s upcoming graduation from Land O’ Lakes High School — just as Marvin Renslow would have wanted them to.
“We have a graduation gown with many honor cords on it,” Sandy Renslow said of her son’s academic accomplishments.
Tyler, who is graduating with honors, is ranked sixth in his senior class of 279 students. In August, he starts at the University of Florida, where he will double major in aerospace and mechanical engineering.
“We’re looking at these good things because that’s how my husband would want it,” she said.
Outside the entrance of their tan, stucco one-story suburban home about 14 miles north of Tampa, Sandy and Tyler Renslow stood in the dusk of the warm Florida evening, sharing their thoughts for more than an hour about how their lives have changed since that bitter winter night in Western New York.
The Renslows say faith has allowed them to move forward.
“People noticed how we kept strong in our faith,” Tyler Renslow said. “People saw that we could have sat there and blamed God. We didn’t.”
Recalling his father’s funeral service at First Baptist Church of Lutz, the son said there were so many mourners that, in addition to filling the church sanctuary, a second building was opened to accommodate the more than 1,000 people. Among them were 40 pilots, flight attendants and executives from Colgan Air, the Continental regional subcontractor that operated Flight 3407.
“Not just pilots came, but even airport employees from all over. You name a state, they were there,” Tyler Renslow said.
The Renslows added that they felt touched by the love and support from people across the United States and the world and wanted to thank them, as well as their church and local community.
But now the Renslows say they are cherishing memories of the loved one they lost.
Marvin Renslow’s professional life revolved around aviation, his widow said.
“Even in his sleep, he dreamed about aviation. He’d just blurt out a coordinate or landing and runway,” she said.
She said his lifelong passion for aviation started when he was 5 years old. His uncle Paul took him up in his airplane for the first time, she said.
Flying was not her husband’s only interest, though. He and their son shared a drum set, and Marvin Renslow was a fan of NASCAR racing. He also was active in his church, and the family sang together in church musicals.
But Marvin Renslow’s greatest interest, according to his widow, was their two children — Tyler and Kaley, who was just inducted into the National Junior Honor Society.
Whatever the public might think of the pilot, Tyler Renslow wants people to know that his father was “a very humble and God-fearing family man.” He was the kind of man who thought nothing of working a side job to help his family, even if it meant stocking shelves at a local supermarket, which he did when he transitioned from a pilot’s job at Gulfstream International Airline in Fort Lauderdale to Colgan Air.
“He was always working to make sure we had money to go to college and be successful,” the son said.
Sandy Renslow said she would like others to know this, too: “He was the love of my life, my best friend and my soul mate. We have something here very special that others look for a lifetime and never find.”
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