Crash counselor can’t offer them hope, so he helps them remember

Their stories kept him awake through much of the night. The expectant father in his 20s who was to be a witness at his brother’s wedding Saturday. The disbelieving teens who had come to Charles de Gaulle airport expecting to greet family members arriving from Brazil. The woman in her 60s who grabbed his hands, begging him to say there was still hope of finding her child.

“I had to tell them the truth, that in my opinion there was no hope,” said Guillaume Denoix de Saint Marc, weariness evident in his voice.

Denoix de Saint Marc, who heads an association that counsels victims of terrorism, was back at an airport hotel Tuesday. He and other counselors provided by the French government and Air France were there to help hundreds of people who were still in shock and denial more than a day after the airline’s Flight 447 disappeared during a flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris.

Denoix de Saint Marc, who lost his own father 20 years ago in an airplane terrorist attack, acknowledged that there were limits to what he could offer those whose family, friends and colleagues were among the 216 passengers and 12 crew members aboard the Airbus A330.

“I just ask them about the person who was on the plane,” he said. “I hold their hands, and look them in eyes.”

With little hope of recovering bodies if the plane went down in the deep waters of the Atlantic, victims’ friends and family were left “in a blurred state of emotions,” he said. They can’t help “hoping that maybe, just maybe, this didn’t happen to me.”

CGE Distribution, a French company that sells electrical material, lost as many as nine employees and one associate. They had won a company contest for outstanding salesmanship and were awarded a four-day vacation in Brazil.

Maxime Vernet, who heads one of the company’s agencies, felt a mixture of loss and guilt for encouraging a bright-faced 24-year-old to compete in the annual contest.

Vernet recruited the young woman from Montauban, a French town north of Toulouse, two years ago when she was fresh out of school. She was “full of positive drive,” he said.

“She quickly learned about all the products, and fully invested herself in the job,” he said. “It was a pleasure to sign her up for this contest, because she worked hard for it and really deserved it.”

Her position in the company should have made her ineligible for the competition, but Vernet said he made sure she would get to participate.

The employee, whom Vernet preferred not to name, left behind her boyfriend, who was unable to make the Brazil trip. In his place the young woman brought a girlfriend. Vernet said most of the people who won the trip were young. Each brought a companion.

“That’s destiny,” said Vernet. “Right now, it’s just very hard.”