Long Wait for Answers Burdens Families of Southern Californians Lost on Flight

For Flora Headley, the worst wasn’t learning that her son’s transatlantic flight had blown apart and plunged into the sea, killing everyone on board. It wasn’t the wait for his body--still strapped in his cockpit seat--to be hauled to the surface and examined for clues.

The worst was--and is--the continuing wait; the day-in, day-out emotional vigil; the unanswered questions that still haunt her and others left to grieve the 230 people killed when TWA Flight 800 exploded last July.

“I’m angry, very, very angry,” said Headley, whose son, TWA pilot Ralph Kevorkian, was at the controls when the Paris-bound flight burst into flames and vanished from airport radar screens.

“I would like to bury this whole life behind me and move on. But every day, every week, something new is coming up. How would you like it? . . . Who should live like this?”

Fourteen of those who died on the plane were from Southern California--the pilot, who lived in Garden Grove; two flight attendants; and 11 passengers, including an entire family from Bel-Air, the wife and niece of jazz musician Wayne Shorter and a Van Nuys couple on their way to Italy to be married.

Many of those victims’ friends and relatives will be traveling to New York next week to attend a memorial service marking the one-year anniversary of the July 17 disaster.

They are seeking comfort and a sense of closure, elusive in the aftermath of an aircraft explosion that has produced endless speculation but no official explanation of its cause.

“I want my government to tell me what happened,” said Headley, her voice rising in anger. “I think it was a missile, and they’re covering it up. . . . Everywhere I go, to the hairdresser, to the post office, everybody says the same thing: ‘It was a missile’ . . . ‘a missile,’ ‘a missile.’ ”

The 86-year-old Montrose woman plans to make the trip to New York, clutching a petition signed by her neighbors and friends that asks the government to “admit” an errant U.S. missile downed the plane.

That is one of several theories studied--and discounted--by investigators, who say it is more likely that a mechanical fluke doomed the flight. But the notion provides a measure of solace for Headley, who believes her son, a highly respected veteran pilot, would have spotted a mechanical malfunction in time to save the plane.

“I don’t expect to get satisfaction [at the memorial service], but I’m going to bring it up,” Headley said. “I’m the mother of the pilot, and I’m not going to let this go by without speaking up for my son.”

Like Headley, Ronald Silverman is still waiting for an answer. But he has stopped waiting for the body of his brother to be found.

In the days after the crash, the remains of all but 16 of the passengers and crew were recovered from the rough seas where the plane fell. The body of Eugene Silverman, a prominent Los Angeles tax attorney, was among those that searchers never found.

Silverman died with his wife, Etta, and daughters Candace, 22, and Jamie, 15. They were on a European vacation, bound first for Italy, to celebrate Candace’s graduation from USC, then on to Israel, to attend the bat mitzvah of a family friend.

‘It was going to be her graduation present, but Candace didn’t like to travel. She didn’t want to go,” Ronald Silverman recalled. “But Eugene told her, ‘You’re going to San Francisco to take up a profession soon. Let’s all be together this one time. Let’s go and enjoy. It might be the last time we’ll all be a family together.’ ”

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They wound up on Flight 800 when their flight to Rome was canceled and Jamie begged her parents to detour so she could see Paris, he said.

They were the only whole family to perish in the crash, a fact that both haunts and comforts Ronald Silverman. “It may be a morbid thought,” he said, “but as happy as they were as a family unit, it seems fitting that they would go together in death.”

He has stopped agonizing over the fact that his brother’s body will probably never be found. “I say to myself, ‘Of the 16 people who have not been found, it must have been God’s wish. There must be a reason that Eugene’s body was never recovered.’ There’s no sense for me tearing myself apart over it.”

Etta and the girls were buried by her family in a Jewish cemetery in Maryland, close enough to Etta’s childhood home that her 84-year-old father can visit their graves regularly.

On July 20, three days after the first anniversary of the crash, the family’s friends and relatives will gather there to unveil the three headstones in a Jewish ceremony intended to represent closure for the families of the dead.

Meanwhile, in Los Angeles, friends of the Silverman family are trying to make sure that the four are not forgotten. Plans are being made for a memorial park along Mulholland Boulevard, and a foundation has been created to support causes near to the hearts of the Silvermans, including a rape crisis center, a pet rescue group and a program that provides scholarships to enable students to spend a summer in Israel.

“My parents have been working really hard on getting it all together,” said Lauren Bergman, the 13-year-old daughter of the Silvermans’ best friends, Robert and Barbara Bergman. “It’s really important to them . . . a way to honor the [Silverman] family.”

It’s important to Lauren too. It was her bat mitzvah that the Silvermans were heading for when they boarded Flight 800.

The ceremony was delayed and held six months later in Los Angeles. Ronald Silverman flew out from Atlantic City, N.J., to attend on his brother’s behalf. And Lauren donated much of the gift money she received to the charities that her friend, Jamie Silverman, loved.