TWA Victims’ Families Grope for Methods to Cope With Loss

More than two months have passed since TWA Flight 800 was blown out of the sky, but closure is a meaningless concept for many families of the 230 victims.

Their daily routines consist largely of dealing with the disaster. Their grief is ever-present, bottomless.

Olivier Michel spends 10 hours a day on the phone with relatives of other victims. Richard Penzer has become a lobbyist against terrorism. Joseph Lychner flies around the country, visiting friends and relatives--and avoiding the house he shared with the wife and two daughters who died when the jetliner exploded on July 17.

“I’m too old to start over,” said Lychner, 38, who spent just four days at home in the eight weeks after the explosion. “And too young not to.”

The answering machine at Lychner’s home in Houston still picks up with the cheery voice of his wife, Pam, who perished along with their two daughters, Katy, 8, and Shannon, 10.

“I just don’t have the heart to take it off,” Lychner said.

The computer software salesman hears his wife’s voice often. He checks his messages from across the country while visiting family, friends and fraternity brothers, meeting with reporters, and calling other TWA families.

“I don’t have a private life anymore,” Lychner said. “But then I don’t really need one. My entire family is gone. What am I trying to protect? All I can do now is try to do things that will honor them and help the rest of the families.”

There are plans in Texas to name a volunteer award and a state jail after Pam Lychner, who was a prominent advocate for victims’ rights. St. Francis Episcopal Day School, which the Lychner daughters attended, plans a sculpture of them.

Lychner wants to become active on terrorism and airline security issues.

“I really feel in my gut there is something I’m supposed to do as a result of this--getting involved in a way that’s going to make a difference,” he said.

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On a ranch in New River, Ariz., a gentle old horse named Red waits in vain for 11-year-old Larkyn Dwyer.

“He was a perfect first horse,” said Larkyn’s grandmother, Georgianna Dwyer, whose husband gave the mixed-breed gelding to Larkyn two years ago. “She had an awful lot of fun with him.”

Larkyn’s father hopes to have a small public riding arena built in New River as a tribute to Larkyn. And the Sacandaga Saddle Club, near Georgianna Dwyer’s home in Upstate Gloversville, N.Y., plans an annual award for young riders in Larkyn’s name.

As for Red, he’s not going anywhere. “They still have the horse,” Georgianna Dwyer said. “They’re going to keep the horse.”

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Through Post Office Box 1061 in Clifton, N.Y., the relatives of Flight 800’s victims are trying to unite.

They’ve formed a nonprofit group, The Families of TWA Flight 800. They’re sending out a newsletter, as well as planning fund-raisers for meetings and lobbying. Their goals: to support each other, solve problems and improve the way officials respond to disasters.

They have their work cut out for them. One relative mistakenly received a small bag of human remains and autopsy notes with her loved one’s personal effects. It took more than two months for the families of 17 passengers whose bodies are still missing to get death certificates; until then, the Suffolk County medical examiner’s office said it needed more proof that these victims were on the plane.

One teenager who lost both parents sent the organization a note that simply reads: “Can you please help me?”

“This kind of suffering--this is why we felt we had to do something,” said the group’s organizer, John Seaman, whose niece, 19-year-old Michele Becker, was on the plane. “There’s 230 families out there, and each one has tons of people encountering different problems.”

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The AIDS center in Macon, Ga., is a little bleaker these days without Becky Olsen, a 20-year-old University of Georgia student who used to volunteer there.

Her family is considering establishing a fund in her memory to benefit the center, but her mother, Carol, points out that no single cause could capture Becky’s passions. She also volunteered at a soup kitchen, loved ballroom dancing, earned straight A’s and helped book entertainment for the campus.

“I can’t feel that thing some people say--that she didn’t live a life yet,” Carol Olsen said. “I don’t think she slept at night, she did so many things.”

Closure, Olsen added, is something “you don’t even want.”

“We just have to wait till the pain stops and we can smile again.”

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Real-estate developer Richard Penzer is planning a downtown Manhattan building that will be decorated with a mural. His sister, Judy, was famous for her murals with sports and political themes, and some of his other buildings bear her art.

“I used to enjoy seeing her up there painting,” Penzer recalled. “I loved working with my sister.”

The TWA explosion has also turned Penzer into an activist. He’s begun lobbying government officials against what he believes are impotent, politically motivated policies.

“Bomb-sniffing machines and extra security--it’s just a waste of money,” he said. “And asking for photo IDs is just a way of making the United States into a police state. It’s not going to stop someone from putting a bomb on a plane.”

The only rational response, Penzer said, is military action and economic warfare against whoever is responsible--assuming the cause of the explosion is determined to be terrorism.

Penzer believes he can make a difference. “One man “can do an awful lot,” he said.

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In a house in Montpelier, France, Olivier Michel lives with his mother. His brother, Pascal, 28, used to live there too.

“We always lived with my mother,” said Michel, 32. “For my mother, it’s just one child in this house now.”

Michel, who used to manage bars and discos with his brother in Montpelier, would like to see a memorial on Long Island and a house near the crash site that relatives could stay in.

“I talk to 26 different families almost two or three times a week,” Michel said in a brief phone interview that was interrupted several times by calls from other families. “Many times I would like to do nothing, but I know they need to talk.”

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On a New Jersey campus, a sunny garden is planned to memorialize Jill Ziemkiewicz, whose last wish was to see the formal gardens of Versailles.

Jill, 23, had studied landscape architecture at Rutgers University in New Brunswick. “But she couldn’t see herself working in an office,” said her mother, Carol, so she became a flight attendant.

Flight 800 was her first international flight. In a phone call before boarding, she asked her mother for directions to Versailles and said: “I am psyched--I am going to the gardens!”

Words tumbled out as mother described daughter. “She was special, she was great. She was beautiful. I loved her. I adored her. . . . She was so dynamic, she was so fun, she was so self-assured. Jill did live a full life. She did so many wonderful things, and she did them all well. There were so many things I had looked forward to doing with Jill.”

She paused, then added: “Wouldn’t it be appropriate to have a garden in her memory?”

Contributions for the Jill Ziemkiewicz Memorial Garden can be sent to P.O. Box 379, Rutherford, N.J.