June 2001
The Director - Departments
Grief Relief
Aircraft Casualties and Grief Recovery
In 1965, Diane von Rivenburgh was a 19-year-old college freshman taking a drama class. The instructor assigned her and the other students to do an exercise called a "Zeitgeist." Before the class, she was to re-enact an event that changed her life. "I walked up to the stage, lay down on a couch with a stuffed animal my father had given me and cried out, 'My daddy is dead!' I started crying and could not stop for days," she vividly recalls.
Diane von Rivenburgh lost her father in 1959. A U.S. Navy pilot, he died when his plane went down. She was 12 at the time and says that the following years "were a time of denial and confusion for me... there was no grief counseling or support groups in those days. All attention and sympathy were poured on my mother—the widow. My younger brother and I were left to figure things out for ourselves." Even though she has come to terms with her loss, Ms. Von Rivenburgh wonders "whether the whole experience would have been less confusing and frustrating if there had been mentors, grief counselors or other people who would just listen."
Fortunately, today, there is a greater sensitivity and openness about grief issues, and this extends to those whose grieving is the result of losing a loved one in an aircraft casualty. When a plane goes down, there is a prompt amassing of psychological support services for those left behind. Here are some lessons and insights gathered from people involved with losses due to aircraft casualties.
The broader community wants to help. Beyond the immediate family and close friends, the larger community sincerely desires to help in any way possible. George E. Pataki was governor of New York state when TWA Flight 800 crashed off the coast of Long Island on the evening of July 17, 1996. "When I heard the news, everything that seemed important just minutes before suddenly became irrelevant," Pataki recalls. "It occurred to me that one of the most important functions a governor can fulfill is to extend a caring hand to people in despair and give them what they need most in times of sorrow: comfort, understanding and a shoulder to cry on."
With this in mind, the governor and his staff organized a memorial service on the beach closest to the site of the disaster. That service was broadcast worldwide, enabling people everywhere to join in the mourning and to show love and support for the family members who needed it desperately. Later, many family members who were present on the beach told Pataki that the service and all of the state's efforts on their behalf helped to ease their pain. "What this means to me, I cannot possibly express in words," he says. Airline disasters have a "ripple" impact. On January 31, 2000, Alaska Airlines Flight 261 dropped into the Pacific Ocean shortly after leaving Mexico. The loss of lives impacted many communities up and down the West Coast. Barbara Skudlarick, a resident in the state of Washington, chronicled the ripple effect of that tragedy:
Twelve former students from Western Washington University, a state college located in her community, were passengers on Alaska Airlines Flight 261.
The minister who spoke at a memorial service for her community attended high school and college with a husband and wife who were among the passengers.
A young mother who works at the salon Skudlarick uses spent an hour talking of her husband's difficult experience as owner and captain of a squid boat. His boat was one that volunteered to conduct search and rescue/salvage operations, and retrieved a ring belonging to one of the passengers.
Upon opening her favorite magazine, Skudlarick was stopped again by the letter from the magazine's editor. It was a "beautiful, heartfelt dedication to a writer who was a wine critic and had written for this magazine and the whole industry for over 25 years. He and his wife both were on Alaska Airlines Flight 261."
People seek spiritual meaning in tragedy. Joan Pontante from New York lost her brother, his wife and their three children on Northwest Flight 255, which crashed near Detroit on August 16, 1987. While at the cemetery, Pontante asked for a "sign" that her lost family members were "at peace." She explains what then transpired: "I came back home and was sitting in my living room and telling my sister-in-law about going out there [to the cemetery] and talking to my brother and his family and asking for a sign. As I was saying this, all of a sudden I looked out the window and in the sky was this beautiful rainbow, and it was a clear day and it had not even rained. I never believed in getting signs from God, but now I know it does happen, and I am now a believer."
Memorial services are very important. One year after Swissair Flight 111 crashed into the Atlantic Ocean (September 2, 1998), Lynn Romano Zimney traveled to Halifax, Nova Scotia, at the invitation of local Canadians, who invited surviving family members to return for a one-year memorial service. Romano Zimney lost her brother in that tragedy. Also present were hundreds of other family members who came to memorialize their loved ones. "It was three days of intense emotions," she says. "The burial and memorial ceremonies were unbelievably touching; the Canadian people could not have been nicer. The investigators patiently explained what they were doing. The signs along the road by the people who are residents of that peaceful land were meant to provide support to us, the families who are heartbroken. I will always feel their love and am deeply appreciative."
Holidays are difficult. November of 1996 began a challenging holiday season for Anne Allen, a Georgia resident, who lost her husband, Lamar (age 49), and son, Ashton (age 16), on TWA Flight 800. She was dreading Christmas and knew her two remaining children, Amberly, 15, and Cameron, 14, did also. She chose to take the children and spend Christmas with her brother and family in Virginia.
"On Christmas morning, Cameron came to the room where I was sleeping. 'Mom, get up!' I first wanted to bury my head in the pillow and skip the entire day. 'Go back to bed, Cameron,' I whispered. 'But Mom, it's Christmas,' and I detected a faint glimmer of hope in his voice." With a newfound resolve, Ms. Allen rose from sleep knowing "it was up to me to put an act on for these children. They were still alive, and Lamar and Ashton would want them to live their lives to the fullest and celebrate living." Looking back at that day, Ms. Allen remembers that it was hard but bearable. For her family, it was therapeutic to change their holiday tradition.
Children need to be remembered. Even though there is more support today for survivors, Diane von Rivenburgh urges "adults to communicate with the youngsters involved. The pain is different but is definitely there, as well as the need to express it."
For more resources and grief support for those who lose loved ones to aircraft casualties, funeral directors and their client families can log on to ACCESS (AirCraft Casualty Emotional Support Services) at www.accesshelp.org.
Victor M. Parachin, Tulsa, OK, is a NFDA grief educator and minister. Send comments and questions to
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
.
