Some Families Lash Out; Others Say, ‘Thank You’

Already forced to endure the unimaginable, Joe Lychner is sick of excuses and explanations. He wants to hear only one thing: that the body of his beloved 10-year-old daughter has been found.

Richard Penzer also lost a loved one in the crash of TWA Flight 800--his sister, Judy Penzer. But the Long Island real estate developer shares none of the anger with the government’s performance that has characterized public statements by Lychner and other grieving families.

On the contrary, on Thursday he praised everyone involved in the process and at the same time suggested that no amount of effort or resources could satisfy some of his fellow mourners.

“They’re doing the best they can,” Penzer said shortly before President Clinton arrived to address the grieving families. “This is the United States mobilizing everything.”

Among the families brought together by fate and grief, Lychner and Penzer represent opposite ends of the spectrum of responses here. They also reflect emerging disagreement among the relatives of the crash victims over whether the government has done all it can to reclaim the bodies and keep the anguished families informed.

Lychner’s anguish is deep. His wife and two daughters died in the crash. When he learned earlier this week that the bodies of his wife and 8-year-old daughter had been identified, the news led to a new fear: that the remains of his older daughter might never be found.

Lychner’s frustration--like that of many of the victims’ relatives staying at the Ramada Plaza Hotel near John F. Kennedy International Airport here--boiled over this week, prompting Clinton’s visit. Some family members had bitterly complained that the agonizing pace of the recovery-and-identification operation has been compounded by a dearth of information and conflicting accounts.

But there is a different view, as expressed by Penzer, whose sister was an accomplished artist who painted enormous murals and worked with juvenile offenders. She was on her way to Paris to visit castles with a friend.

“You have to recognize reality”--in this case the extraordinarily difficult and laborious salvage operation at sea to retrieve 230 bodies as well as the evidence necessary to determine the cause of the explosion, Penzer said.

Mental health experts said such a range of reactions to sudden and tragic loss is not unusual. They attributed the differences to factors such as individual personalities and life experiences, including whether a person has developed coping skills during a previous trauma.

“The grieving process is very individualistic,” said Dusty Bowenkamp, a Red Cross mental health counselor from Los Angeles who has been here assisting the families.

“Many times people who are experiencing anger are so overwhelmed with grief that they don’t know how to handle it, so they lash out. Any time you have a man-made disaster, you want to hold somebody responsible. People will hang on to that anger sometimes--focus on that--to get them through.”

The contrasts between Lychner’s and Penzer’s circumstances also could contribute to their conflicting perspectives.

Lychner, 38, a computer software sales executive from Houston, lost his entire immediate--and close-knit--family.

His wife Pam, 37, was a former TWA flight attendant who had won acclaim for founding a crime victims rights organization after surviving an attempted kidnapping and rape. The couple was to celebrate their 12th wedding anniversary last Sunday.

Lychner’s older daughter, Shannon, was “the sweetest thing in my life,” he said. Katie, the other daughter, “was always in control, determined and independent.”

In an interview, an emotional Lychner tried to sum up his devastating sense of loss:

“Your entire life centers around your family and, all of a sudden, in just a second, all you have said and done for the past 12 years will only, for the rest of your life, give you pain.”

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Unlike Lychner, Penzer, also 38, was fortunate that his sister’s body was among the earliest to be recovered and identified. She was number 61.

He was notified Tuesday. Judy Penzer, 49, who had lived in Pittsburgh, Pa., was buried in Queens, N.Y., the following day. He praised her idealism and integrity, and fellow artists paid tribute to her spirit with poetry.

“I was very thankful to God that she was found early and that we could bury her quickly,” said Penzer, reflecting a form of closure that has thus far been denied Lychner.

Penzer also has had the benefit of living in nearby Lawrence, N.Y., an affluent Long Island community, while Lychner remains far from home, a virtual prisoner in the tightly secured hotel where he is surrounded by constant reminders of the tragedy’s aftermath.

He said, however, that he has drawn strength from the sense of community amid the large group of victims’ relatives.

Bowenkamp said that for Lychner and others, life within the hotel is a mixed blessing. She said the feeling among the families is positive, a sense that they are “one big team.” On the other hand, remaining makes it impossible to begin the healing process of resuming any semblance of a more routine life.

Lychner has vowed to stay until he can take his entire family home with him. Still-missing Shannon was born on the day that the space shuttle Challenger blew up in 1986, and she dreamed of being an astronaut.

“We have already lost everything that we can possibly lose,” Lychner said Wednesday. “I want my loved ones back.”

He said that finding only two of them would be worse than finding none: “My wife would not stand for leaving any one of them behind.”

Inspired by his wife’s activism on behalf of crime victims, Lychner has become a frequent face before television cameras. He described his days as hectic--dealing with the Red Cross, police and TWA representatives while trying to get new information.

“I know my wife is here with me, and she is giving me strength,” Lychner said. “She would be doing what I’m doing--getting the word out, seeking information.”

The most recent outcry from Lychner and others was sparked when New York Gov. George Pataki, a regular presence at the families’ hotel, announced Tuesday that Navy divers had spotted another 60 to 100 bodies amid the wreckage 120 feet below the surface in Moriches Inlet. But, within hours, Pataki was contradicted by senior federal investigators.

Acknowledging that the families have not been adequately updated, authorities have arranged to provide them with a direct link-up to daily briefings by investigators at the crash site. Officials have also assured the family members that they will be provided information more rapidly and more accurately.

To Penzer, the uproar over misinformation was overblown. “To attack them on petty points is unjust,” he said of the elected officials.

Penzer said that while Lychner is speaking on behalf of angry families at the Ramada, he does not speak for him.

“He’s rightfully upset,” said Penzer, who has two daughters. “But emotions shouldn’t dictate reality. It’s not right.”

Penzer was among those who criticized TWA in the immediate aftermath of the crash for failing to confirm the names of those aboard Flight 800 promptly. He said he found out his sister was on the flight not from the airline but from hours of tortuous detective work.

But since then, he said, TWA has been first-class.

“A lot of the people who share my feelings are keeping quiet or have gone back home,” he said. He described these as “the people who want to be responsible and to be thankful” for all that has been done for them.

Miller is a Times staff writer and Meyer is a special correspondent.