Families Sail to Crash Site to Say Prayers

Three families who lost loved ones in the Alaska Airlines crash sailed to the wreckage site Wednesday and held a prayer service punctuated by a “Dead Man’s Salute” from sailors lining the deck of a circling Coast Guard cutter.

The group aboard the fishing boat Jeanne included adult family members of three of the 88 people who died when the jetliner plunged into the Pacific shortly after 4 p.m. Monday. One relative lives in Ventura County, boat employees said. Also on board were airline employees, a Port Hueneme police officer, a clergyman and three Red Cross volunteers who went along to provide comfort.

“This was a very somber thing to do. I had to work very hard at keeping my composure,” boat captain Fred Mathis said.

Referring to the salute offered by Coast Guard officers on an escorting ship, he said: “That broke a lot of people down.”

The sky was sunny and the sea was calm during the one-hour trip to the search area off Anacapa Island, in sharp contrast to the somber mood on board. The fishing boat was escorted by Point Bridge, an 82-foot Coast Guard cutter.

Mathis’ boat rocked back and forth in a mild current as it rested over the crash site. Except for a small flotilla of recovery boats anchored more than a mile away, the families were left alone to grieve.

Red-eyed and tired, mourners sat in chairs lining the deck, or stood in small groups, most clutching hands as a clergyman gave a brief sermon, Mathis said.

A war veteran who served two years in an Army infantry division in Vietnam, Mathis said he had witnessed death many times, but Wednesday’s service was especially heartbreaking.

“You don’t really think about it until it happens to you. As close as I was today I could feel it,” Mathis said.

Mathis manned the radio and the wheel up front, but he could not help but become a witness to the somber ceremony. Family members took turns sharing memories and thoughts about the victims and then they bowed their heads in prayer, he said.

After the moment of silence, broken only by the humming of media helicopters above, family members laid red-and-white carnations on the water. Mathis said members of one family threw small handfuls of rice, a custom he had observed before with families from different cultures.

The ceremony lasted an hour. Then Mathis circled the fishing boat three times around the area where the flowers were placed.

“One time each for the three families involved,” he said.

As the fishing vessel turned for shore, officers on the cutter asked permission by radio to pass on the starboard side, Mathis said.

Through tears, Mathis described how the Coast Guard officers stood side-by-side on the deck of the cutter and gave the family members what he called a “Dead Man’s Salute” as a whistle on board the cutter sounded.

“They stood at attention until we passed,” Mathis said. “It broke everybody down.”

Mathis, a tall, burly man with a soft-spoken demeanor, who has worked as a skipper for two decades, said he was particularly affected by this incident because he spends his summers leading fishing tours in Alaska and travels on the airline regularly.

“The lodge I work at is in Yakutat,” said the Ventura native. “Right outside, about as far as that wall,” he said, pointing to a spot about 20 feet away, “is the Alaska Airlines terminal. I see these people everyday when I’m there.”

Mathis, like the owners of the boat he guides and the dozens of commercial fishermen who helped in the recovery effort this week, volunteered for the mission.

Dorothy Scuri, who owns the fishing boat with her ailing, 92-year-old husband, offered the grieving relatives free use of her boat after learning they wanted to visit the crash site.

“As soon as I was asked would I do it, I said ‘absolutely,’ ” she said.

“The whole situation is so sad, and it’s been so heartbreaking,” she said. “To be able to do anything that would ease the pain for some of these people is gratifying.”

The longtime Montalvo couple used to run the boat up and down the coast of California for sports fishers but turned its operation over to Mathis some years back after age and ill health caught up with her husband, Mack.

“He was the skipper, of course, and I was the galley girl,” she said, after politely declining to reveal her own age.