What Does ‘Never Again’ Mean? Crash Survivor Asks

Four-year-old Cecilia Cichan asked what never again meant after an aunt broke the news that the girl’s parents and brother died in the crash of Northwest Airlines Flight 255, relatives said.

“She didn’t understand,” Pauline Ciamaichela, the Arizona girl’s grandmother, told the Arizona Republic. “She’ll be asking again.”

The sole survivor of the Aug. 16 crash at Detroit Metropolitan Airport did not cry after being told Monday night that she would never see her parents or 6-year-old brother again, the newspaper reported today.

In Maple Glen, Pa., about 700 friends, relatives and others gathered in church today to mourn the deaths of Cecilia’s parents and brother.

“We believe God spared her to give the rest of her family the strength to bear the cross and hope to face the future,” Father Andrew Robberect said during a funeral Mass at St. Alphonsus Roman Catholic Church.

Cecilia’s aunt and godmother, Rita Lumpkin, broke the news of their deaths to the girl in her room at C. S. Mott Children’s Hospital in Ann Arbor. Lumpkin did not use the words dead or killed, said Anthony Ciamaichela, the child’s grandfather.

“(Lumpkin) told her that they had been in an accident and she would never ever see them again, ever,” he said.

The child asked a “couple of times” what never again means, Pauline Ciamaichela said.

Lumpkin told Cecilia that she, too, had been in an accident, but Ciamaichela said the child did not seem to remember much about the crash that killed her parents, Michael Cichan, 32, Paula, 33, and her brother, David.

The Cichans had been visiting relatives in the Philadelphia area and were en route to their home in Tempe, Ariz., when the plane crashed, killing 156 people.