Engineer on 747 Was From Westminster

An American flag flew at half staff this morning outside the Westminster home of Jerry Avritt, 46, the flight engineer aboard the Pan American 747 jet that crashed in Scotland.

Judy Avritt said she found the news about her husband hard to believe, “even though I keep seeing the pictures of the crash on television.”

Jerry Avritt’s New York-bound flight on the Pan Am jet was to have been his last before the Christmas holiday, she said. “Jerry was supposed to be home tonight.”

Neighbor Judy Kappen, who was consoling Judy Avritt and her children, Angela, 15, and Marcus, 16, students at Westminster High, said, “The family is still in shock. There’s also some anger because they’ve heard the reports that the plane may have been exploded by terrorists.”

Jerry Avritt had been a flight engineer since 1973, his wife said. He commuted from New York, where he worked the flights to Europe.

Avritt, who was a native of Lebanon, Ky., had moved to Oceanside with his family when he was 12. He graduated from Oceanside High School in the early 1960s, and then enlisted in the Air Force, becoming a jet mechanic.

Judy Avritt described her husband as being “a man with a great sense of humor and a great curiosity to learn about as many things as he could.” She said her husband loved to read “and he knew everyone at the Westminster Library, he went there so often.”

Funeral arrangements are incomplete. “Right now, we’re just waiting,” she said. “This is all very hard to believe.”