Victims’ Families Forever Changed by TWA Jet Disaster

Their lives have become divided into two parts: Before and After.

For the families and friends of the 230 people who died nearly one year ago, when Paris-bound TWA Flight 800 climbed into the sky just off Long Island, N.Y., exploded over the Atlantic Ocean and fell into the sea, the night of July 17, 1996, has become a demarcation: the point at which their lives became forever colored by their loss.

“I can’t even describe the pain and agony I have had to live with every moment since this happened,” said Carol Ziemkiewicz, whose 24-year-old daughter, Jill, a TWA flight attendant, was among those who perished. “It was like being slammed against a cement wall. We are a different family.”

She speaks for many who try, amid tears and anger, to put the unspeakable into words and to find an explanation for the inexplicable.

“These kids were such nice kids--they never hurt anybody. Why did these kids have to die?” said Will Rogers, whose only child, daughter Kimberly, was among the 16 teenagers from Montoursville, Pa., aboard the aircraft. “There are people in this world who inflict terrible things on other people--and they go on. But these kids had to die? Why?”

A cause for the accident has not yet been definitively determined, although federal air-safety investigators lean toward theories that point to a major mechanical malfunction that would have caused the center fuel tank to explode. But for many left behind, the unfinished investigation is secondary.

“It’s the furthest thing from my mind,” Ziemkiewicz said. “It will never bring Jill back.”

Joseph Lychner agrees with her. The Houston computer software expert lost his entire family--wife Pam, 37, and daughters Shannon, 10, and Katie, 8.

‘I Don’t Think You Ever Find Closure to This’

“It’s very, very sad that my entire family could have died because of a spark of static electricity,” he said. “Yet, at the same time, no matter what the cause is, they’re dead and they are not coming back.”

He added: “I don’t think you can ever find closure in something like this. It affects you for the rest of your days.”

Some continue to cling to memories and possessions left behind by their loved ones, refusing to discard their clothing or to clean out their rooms. Many have trouble waking up in the mornings; others cannot fall asleep at night. Some have sought counseling; others have rejected the idea.

Mornings are the worst time for Rogers, an electrician-turned-stay-at-home dad, who raised Kim from the age of 3 weeks while his pharmacist wife worked.

He wakes up. Then--in a searing moment--remembers that his daughter is gone.

“I lost my best friend,” he said.

Some have gained a measure of solace from other families affected by this or similar tragedies. They choose to spend time with them--having experienced the same kind of loss, they understand--rather than to be with old friends, who have not been so touched.

Lychner, for example, found strength in connecting with a young Colorado woman whose husband and two children--of the same ages as Lychner’s--were killed two years ago in a private plane crash.

Lychner’s sister in Colorado brought them together. They developed a close friendship, and for a time, “we talked on the phone every night,” Lychner said.

Some have turned to activism, trying to create something positive out of the horrific, fighting for the rights of families of airline crash victims. Many also are engaged in the frustrating task of seeking a just settlement from TWA, a situation that remains unresolved.

In Montoursville, which lost five adult chaperons in addition to the 16 teenagers, all of whom were traveling to Paris for a trip sponsored by the high school French Club, residents are planning to create a memorial.

“I knew every one of those families,” said Mayor John Dorin. “We’re a community of only 5,000. Who would have thought something like this would happen here?”

Ziemkiewicz, a widow with two other grown children, has been incapable of changing a thing in her daughter’s room. Jill, who had been a flight attendant for only five weeks when she died, was planning to move into a place of her own and had begun removing some of her things in the days before the accident.

But now, “I can’t get rid of her stuff. I just can’t do it,” her mother said, her voice breaking. “I don’t want to forget.”

Similarly, Michel Breistroff, a Frenchman whose 25-year-old son--also named Michel--died in the accident, wears his son’s brown corduroy shirt at home and puts on the young man’s windbreaker to attend meetings of Victims of Flight 800, an association of which he is vice president.

The dining room of the Breistroff’s sixth-floor apartment in Roubaix, a depressed town in the north of France, has become a shrine to the younger Breistroff, who graduated in 1995 from Harvard University, where he had played varsity hockey.

There are framed photographs of the young man wearing his Harvard jersey on the ice; his bachelor of arts diploma; a framed map of the Harvard campus; a table covered with photos, hockey memorabilia and a scrapbook labeled simply: “Michel.” His crimson-and- white jersey, No. 7, is draped over the back of a chair.

And Michel’s ashes rest in a metal chest on the sideboard.

“I spread out everything, and I don’t want to touch any of it,” said the elder Breistroff, 56.

He and his wife, Audrey, 57, a midwife, have been planning to move to a smaller house, but he is reluctant to cut what symbolizes their final ties to their son. “I think it’s going to be difficult to leave,” he said.

For others, familiar reminders have become unbearable, rather than comforting.

Tanya Cremades, 19, who lost her 15-year-old brother, Daniel, no longer goes sailing or skiing because these were sports the two of them used to do together.

‘It Has Destabilized Very Much Our Family’

“Anything she did with her brother, she doesn’t want to do any longer,” said their father, Jose Cremades, 45, a civil servant from Spain who works in Strasbourg, France. and He is president of the victims’ association.

“It has broken the equilibrium we had in our family,” he said. “It has destabilized very much our family. But we have to live with it. First, we give a maximum amount of support to our daughter. Because she needs it.”

Similarly, Cindy Cox, 37, and her husband, Rob, 39, of Montoursville, who lost their 16-year-old daughter, Monica, have had to pull together for the sake of their 6-year-old son, Brian.

“There are those days when you just want to fall apart, but you know you can’t because another child is depending on you,” Cindy Cox said. In order to weep, “you have to find quiet moments, after he’s asleep.”

The Coxes found it agonizing trying to explain to their little boy why his big sister never came home.

“The questions and comments you get from a 6-year-old can be the most difficult to deal with,” Cindy Cox said. “He’ll say things like ‘Monica was just a kid, and kids don’t die.’ This is a pretty harsh reality for somebody that little.”

The reality has been no less harsh on her. “She [Monica] never got to go to her prom or get her driver’s license,” Cox said, adding: “I never expected, at age 36, to be attending one of my children’s funerals.”

Monica, who was interested in ecology--and who tried in vain to get rid of her numerous freckles--still gets mail and catalogs from skin care companies. Her mother has tried to get them to remove her name from their lists.

And last Christmas--among the hardest times for many of the families to get through--a few cards even came addressed to all four Cox family members.

“That really hurts so much,” Cindy Cox said. “It’s another reminder of our great loss.”

The Coxes had lived in Montoursville a short time and expect to move again because Rob Cox--an engineer who builds welding machines--is transferred frequently. For this reason, Monica’s remains were cremated and will stay with the family.

“If she had been buried here, we wouldn’t be able to leave,” Cindy Cox said. “This way, no matter where we go in our travels, she’ll always be home.”

Relatives of the European victims are especially angry that the cause of the disaster has not yet been resolved. They are mistrustful of investigators and feel they have been shut out of the inquiry.

Breistroff plays a recurring mental movie of what he imagines the last, horrible seconds of the flight must have been like: the explosion, the sudden decompression, screams and bodies flung into space.

“It’s something I haven’t accepted yet,” he said. “I think it’s linked to the fact that we don’t know yet how it happened, and that we’re dealing with people who are hiding something. . . . I can’t imagine it was an accident.”

Some of the relatives of the U.S. victims have worked at trying to improve the treatment for air-crash victims’ families. Cindy Cox, for example, was among those who traveled to Washington to tell her story to policymakers.

She endured months of uncertainty over the medical examiner’s report on her daughter. Monica was recorded as 3 inches shorter and 20 pounds heavier than she actually was. This raised fears within the family over whose remains they had received.

“It turns out that they weighed her in a body bag with water in it, and did not lay her flat when they measured her,” Cox said. “This is one of the reasons my husband and I became active--because they shouldn’t create a second tragedy on top of the first tragedy.”

Indeed, she hopes that because she shared her experiences with federal officials, “perhaps it will be easier for the families who follow us.”

She added: “If some good comes out of this, then I will have accomplished something in her memory.”

The Victims of Flight 800 group, whose European members met recently in Roubaix, is battling TWA over what it calls the airline’s hardball tactics over compensation.

Blanket Release of Responsibility

They claim that TWA has demanded that victims’ families sign a blanket release of responsibility for the carrier before it pays the $75,000 per family authorized by the 1929 Warsaw Convention.

TWA officials deny this, saying the airline’s insurer did send a letter to families offering a final $75,000 settlement, but that this was not meant to pressure family members into ending the matter there.

Mark Abels, a spokesman for the airline, said TWA also had offered an immediate payment of $75,000 to certain families--those experiencing economic hardship--and advised them that the amount would be applied to any future legal settlements.

But “this in no way limits their rights to any additional settlement,” Abels said. “We have not asked any family to waive any claims.”

However, it is possible that courts will apply the 1920 “Death on the High Seas Act” to any future settlements. This could limit, or even eliminate, compensation for many families, especially those who lost children.

The law provides compensation based on the degree of economic loss; thus a family who lost a working parent could obtain a more significant award than a parent who lost a child--who, in fact, could receive nothing at all.

Some families are outraged at rumors that TWA has been pressuring a U.S. judge to apply this law. Relatives have been lobbying lawmakers to ensure that this does not happen.

Abels denied TWA was involved in pressuring anyone, although he did note that the law “does appear to apply.”

Despite their continued grief, many of the victims’ relatives are determined to keep going, to start again--even to have more children.

The 39-year-old Lychner described his greatest personal rewards as having come from his family and said he was optimistic that he would once again experience such joy.

“I’m bound and determined to do it again, because I can’t live without that in my life,” he said. “If it were bad, you wouldn’t want to do it again. And in my case, it was more than good.”

Rogers agrees.

“The most important moment in a person’s life is right now,” he said. “We still have a lot of hope. We know that’s what Kim would want. She wouldn’t want us to jump off a cliff; she would want us to climb it.”

Cimons reported from Washington, Dahlburg from Roubaix.