Pair Remembered : Mourners Recall Lives of Young Couple on TWA Flight 800 En Route to Wedding in Italy

Before he died in the TWA flight disaster last month, Brent Richey did not so much sail through life as plow through it, his mourners agreed Saturday.

From the way he completed college in 2 1/2 years while editing both his school newspaper and its literary magazine to his recent double turn as a full-time law student and entrepreneur, the 26-year-old Van Nuys resident continuously sowed the seeds of a fertile mind, leaving accomplishments and admirers in his neatly cultivated tracks.

So it stood to reason that when he proposed to his longtime girlfriend last Christmas, Richey would do it with uncommon style, suggesting that the couple wed in Florence, Italy. He and his fiancee, Seana Anderson, 27, were on their way to their dream wedding when TWA Flight 800 crashed off the coast of Long Island on July 17, killing all 230 people on board.

He died the day after his 26th birthday.

The small funeral home chapel where the young pair were memorialized Saturday scarcely seemed large enough to contain the grief of their nearly 100 mourners, who included relatives, friends, professional colleagues and Richey’s classmates and professors from Loyola Marymount University, where he was about to enter his fourth year of law school.

Their sense of tragedy was heightened not only by the thought of the couple’s aborted marriage plans--they intended to hold a wedding reception next Saturday and were waiting to close escrow on the house in Castaic they bought together--but by the immense promise their lives seemed to hold.

“I think a lot of people figured Brent would be a senator someday,” said Larry Baker, who was Richey’s journalism advisor at Southern Utah University. “He always pushed himself to be the best he could be and had this magical way of motivating everyone around him to be their best.”

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During the hourlong memorial service at Charles Carroll Mortuary in Ventura, Richey was remembered as someone possessing unusual energy and mental gifts. No one could recall a time when the dark-haired Kansas native hadn’t been an honor student, hadn’t been involved in recreational sports and volunteer work, hadn’t been running a business or writing poetry.

While powering his way through college, he not only completed the work for degrees in both political science and social science, but worked as a local sports correspondent for the Associated Press, as a law clerk and as an intern for former U.S. Sen. Jake Garn of Utah. He won awards for his writing and in a national stock market competition.

After college he moved to Ventura to be near his mother, Shirley Anderson.

At Loyola, where Richey attended night school, he continued the same pattern of academic achievement and extracurricular involvement, making the dean’s list while writing for the student entertainment law review, serving as a “justice” on the student moot court and working as a paralegal. On weekends, he played bass guitar for church youth groups and coached an adult softball team in Van Nuys.

Then last year, he and a childhood friend from Kansas co-founded a telecommunications company selling long-distance service and telephone cards. The business partners intended to use the company as a way of financing their long-term dream of becoming movie moguls and launching a Hollywood studio. In its second year, Vision Telecommunications had become successful enough that the pair had hired a small, permanent sales staff and moved the company from the Van Nuys home Richey shared with Anderson to a luxurious Westside office.

“We used to dream about being at the Academy Awards and accepting our Oscars for the movies we produced and who we would thank,” said Paul Raehpour, Richey’s partner, his voice catching with emotion. “He is definitely someone I will thank.”

Eulogizing Richey from an altar adorned with sprays of white roses, gladioli and mums, matching wine-colored caskets and an engagement photograph of him and Anderson, Loyola law professor Laurie Levenson said, “He did more in his 26 years than most people do in a very generous lifetime. . . . If he ever dared to daydream, he asked God’s forgiveness for his every idle thought.”

Levenson, who was the advisor on Richey’s senior project about corporal punishment, said in an interview that no matter how full her student’s plate was, he never failed to get his law school work in on time. He was, she said, “a sterling example of how we want all our students to be.”

“If he said a paper was going to be in at 6 o’clock, it was in at 6 o’clock, not 6:02, not 6:01,” Levenson said. Before leaving for Italy, Levenson said, Richey wrote her a note asking permission to turn in the final draft of his project after he returned from his wedding and honeymoon.

According to Raehpour, Richey’s zest for life was never more apparent than when he was around Anderson. The two met over the telephone five years ago while both were working for law firms.

Although her past had its share of hardship, including motherhood at the age of 16, the death of her own mother in 1988 and an early divorce, Anderson brought out the determined Richey’s playful side, Raehpour said.

As an example of Richey’s devotion to his fiancee, Raehpour recalled talking to his friend about plans for his bachelor party. “He knew Seana would not want a stripper at the party, and he said, ‘If you have a stripper, I’m not going,’ ” Raehpour said.

Carol Daly, a friend of Anderson’s, said in a letter that was read aloud at the service that Richey similarly brought out the best in his girlfriend, who worked as a secretary for a Los Angeles physician. Under the steady glow of his love, she became more confident and trusting.

“She always said, ‘Brent just wants me to do what makes me happiest,’ ” Daly wrote.

Last Christmas, Richey proposed by giving Anderson an empty photograph frame as a gift. Somewhat puzzled, Anderson said she was not sure what she would put in it. “Our wedding photograph,” he told her.

Anderson’s body was recovered amid the TWA flight wreckage within days of the airline disaster, which has so far confounded investigators’ efforts to identify its cause.

Richey’s remains have not been located.