TWA Tragedy: Families, Friends Unite in Grief

Under the soaring arches of St. Patrick’s Cathedral and on the sandy shores of the Atlantic, hundreds of friends and family members Thursday mourned the 230 people who perished aboard TWA Flight 800 a year ago.

With roses and sunflowers, pictures of the dead, tears, embraces, smiles and snatches of intensely private conversation, they remembered--and heard that complete closure after such a stunning tragedy can be an illusion.

“The pursuit of closure is an elusive pursuit and sometimes a cruel pursuit,” Cardinal John J. O’Connor told mourners gathered in the front rows of the church. “The sorrow still runs very very deeply.”

“When the loss comes about suddenly, when there are so many questions in our minds unanswered, the pain is even more intense,” the Rev. John T. Ferry said. “I would suggest for you, the most important thing is to remember not only the tragedy of their deaths but the gift of their lives.”

Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani also spoke from the pulpit.

“The waters of the Atlantic have not quenched your grief,” he said.

Some cried, others remained stoic in the great cathedral. TWA employees wearing white shirts with epaulets sat next to family members dressed in black. They shook hands with the families, hugged, kissed and cried, united in grief.

“We have a closeness that few people in the world will ever have,” explained Joe Lychner, who lost his wife and two daughters when the Boeing 747 plunged into the Atlantic shortly after taking off from John F. Kennedy International Airport on a flight to Paris. “We have gone through something that few people in this world ever will.”

Twenty members of Michel Breistroff’s family came from France. Breistroff, a Harvard graduate and a member of the French Olympic hockey team, also left behind a fiancee, Heidi Snow of Manhattan.

“I think this is an important event for everybody,” Snow said. “It is very important to get together and spend this time. . . . There is no solution and no answer. But at least we can try to help each other.”

Later, on the surf-washed shore at Smith Point County Park in Suffolk County on Long Island--the closest point of land to where the plane crashed 10 miles away in the ocean--the names of the dead were read aloud.

Some relatives sat with their eyes closed, alone with their memories. Others lowered their heads and cried. Red and yellow roses stuck in the sand by the mourners fluttered in the wind.

Judy Collins sang “Amazing Grace,” and a military bugler sounded taps.

New York’s Gov. George Pataki presided at the second service.

“The sea behind me has claimed a piece of your heart and a lifetime of your tears,” Pataki said.

“We are gathered here to observe a dark day in history. A year ago, you arrived at this place with an emptiness in your heart that none of us who joined you at that time could possibly fill,” he said.

“Faithfully and courageously you stayed here for weeks, for months, waiting for answers, turning to one another for comfort, searching for hope in a sea of despair,” Pataki said. “Sadly, many of the answers you waited for never came.”

A year after the tragedy, the cause of the crash is still unknown.

Investigators say the plane’s partially-filled center fuel tank exploded. Members of the National Transportation Safety Board suspect static electricity or a spark ignited a volatile mixture of jet fuel and air. The NTSB has recommended design changes to lessen the chances of such an accident from recurring.

But the possibility that the Boeing 747 may have been brought down by a bomb or a missile also has not been completely discounted. Sophisticated flight tests of the same model aircraft under the same conditions as the doomed TWA jetliner are underway in an attempt to find answers.

FBI Director Louis J. Freeh and James K. Kallstrom, who heads the bureau’s New York field office, were present at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, along with Jim Hall, the NTSB’s chairman. Secretary of Transportation Rodney Slater was among the dignitaries at the service on Long Island.

The twin services began three days of memorials. People who lost loved ones will tour the hanger at Calverton, N.Y., where more than 90 feet of the aircraft has been reassembled--the largest reconstruction in the history of aviation accident investigations.

There will also be a dinner honoring all the people who have tried to find answers to the crash and who tried fruitlessly to rescue passengers and crew from the fiery ocean.

At 8:32 p.m. Thursday, the moment the jumbo jet exploded, the hundreds of people who gathered to remember, walked to the shore. The time was designated for them to be alone with their thoughts.