Passengers’ Friends, Kin Receive Word at Arrival Terminal in Boise

Relatives and friends of passengers aboard a Continental Airlines jet that crashed on takeoff in Denver packed an airport banquet room Sunday night, anxiously seeking word on loved ones who had been due to arrive at Boise Municipal Airport.

Linda and Jerry Davis of Melba, Idaho, population 200, waited stoically to learn whether their two boys had survived the Denver airline crash that killed at least 26 people.

The Davises seemed to make a point of not pestering officials for the latest news, waiting hour after hour for word of their sons’ fate.

Finally they were called behind the Continental ticket counter. They appeared to be braced for the worst--that sons Wayne, 17, and Chris, 20, were among the dead.

A few minutes later a tearful Linda Davis told reporters: “They’re alive.”

A hospital in Denver paged Shelly Allen at the airport with word that her 17-year-old brother, Patrick Lovelady, was among the survivors. The news prompted other passengers’ relatives to swarm a bank of pay telephones to call hospitals themselves.

Sandy Anderson of Nampa said she learned her twin sister Brenda had survived the crash by calling various hospitals. “She’s alive! She’s in one of the hospitals. It’s my twin sister. I just thank God she’s alive,” Anderson said.

Jim Weiss was awaiting a friend, Shonna Simons, and her infant child, from Colorado Springs, Colo., when Simons phoned him at the airport to tell him she had missed the flight.

“It was the best mistake she ever made,” Weiss said.