Close-Knit Community’s World ‘Turning Upside Down’

Their essays for the new millennium line the main corridor at John Hay Elementary School, a bulletin board of hopes big enough to fill the next 1,000 years, fashioned with whatever wisdom they were able to put together in eight or nine.

“My dream for the new millennium is that it would snow every day,” wrote Rachel Pearson, 9, next to her drawing of two smiling, blue-eyed girls clutching hands in a blizzard. “Then we could make snowmen and play with friends outside every day. That would be fun!”

Rachel’s hope for snow is the last thing her classmates have left of her. In a loss that teachers and counselors have found themselves helpless to explain, Rachel and three other students from Hay Elementary were among the passengers on the Alaska Airlines jetliner that crashed this week off the California coast.

Their four desks sat empty Wednesday, as did two houses a mile or so away.

The disaster’s 88 victims included two entire families whose lives centered on this small elementary school in Queen Anne, an upscale Seattle neighborhood of classically restored old bungalows: Rodney and Sarah Pearson, along with Rachel and her 22-month-old sister, Grace; and their friends and vacation companions David and Carolyn Clemetson, who were traveling with their children Coriander, 9, Blake, 7, Miles, 6, and Spencer, 6 months old.

With Wednesday’s announcement that the search and rescue operation for recovery of any survivors was over, Hay officials had to hold a new round of talks with students, this time to tell them that the small flicker of hope that teachers had tried to keep alive over the past two days had slipped beneath a faraway sea.

The shock waves have rippled far beyond the circumference of the school, to encompass a network of families whose lives, in this cluster of roomy old houses, overhanging trees and close-trimmed lawns, had over the years become intertwined with the Pearsons and the Clemetsons: the buddy the two husbands went mountain biking with every Sunday; the Camp Fire Girls; the soccer teams; the ballet class; patients from David Clemetson’s internal medicine practice; the annual block parties; the neighbors that Sarah Pearson would invite over for impromptu Sunday barbecues.

To understand the pain of an entire neighborhood when two of its houses stand suddenly empty is to know that some American neighborhoods are still places where lifelong friendships are forged watering the front lawn, where kids trawl the streets on sunny afternoons looking for someone to go roller-blading with.

It is, said Glen Baker, a friend of both families, more than grief, more than sadness. It is loss. “At some point last night,” he said, “my wife and I said we knew our world was turning upside down.”

So Hay Elementary has become a relief center of sorts. There has been the expected need to talk with students, bring in grief counselors for them, let them express their feelings about the tragedy.

But school officials opened the library this week for parents too. Neighborhood residents streamed in, looking for news of the crash and a chance to share their sense of loss.

“This is a really tightknit community, and so many of the families with students at this school have been together, not just through the elementary grades, but they have roots that go back to preschool,” said Lynn Steinberg, spokeswoman for the Seattle School District.

School Supt. Joseph Olchefske came too. “My only daughter is a kindergartner there,” he said.

“These kids had a lot of connections in that school, and a lot of the kids knew those students,” he said. “Second, a lot of the teachers have watched these kids grow up, and have had deep relationships with the parents.”

Sarah Pearson hosted the last three neighborhood block parties. She had cut back her hours to part time as an Alaska Airlines flight attendant since having Grace, and helped Rachel get more involved in dance lessons and other out-of-school activities.

“You have a 10-minute conversation with Sarah, and it turns into a social occasion,” said Steve Fawthrop, who lived two doors down. “It’s a sunny day and you’re yakking on the steps, and all of a sudden she’ll run into the house and come out with beer and chips and salsa and turn it into a party.”

Rodney Pearson, a fixture in the Seattle restaurant industry for many years, co-owned a popular bistro in Seattle’s Green Lake neighborhood, Six Degrees.

“I’ve never seen anybody work a restaurant full of people like I’ve seen Rod,” said Tom Church, his business partner. “Despite his position of being a high-up person in the company, he was the first person to greet people at the door, he was the first person to clear a table, the first person to see that glasses were bused into the dishwasher. He just kind of reacted that way as a kind of genetic code in his system.”

David Clemetson did research in Africa on how the AIDS virus is transmitted between heterosexuals and co-authored “The Travel Medicine Advisor,” a health guide for international travelers, before becoming a partner in a Seattle-area internal medicine clinic.

His wife, Carolyn, had once owned a travel business and was working toward her master’s degree in art therapy. When someone new moved into the neighborhood, she hosted the welcoming party. When they left, she invited everyone over to say goodbye.

“So many times in this day and age we get really busy with our lives, and you don’t get to know your neighbors. But these neighbors were the very opposite of that,” said Nadia Felker, who lived near the Clemetsons. “They made their neighborhood a community, and I think that was really a blessing.”

They were a Brady Bunch family: Blake and Coriander were David’s daughters from a previous marriage. Miles was Carolyn’s son. Together, they had Spencer.

“There are a lot of women who don’t stay home when they could. She [Carolyn] chose to be a mother to her children. She loved her stepchildren as much as her and David’s child. They were a wonderful example of what a blended family could be,” Felker said.

At Hay Elementary, Principal Joanne Testa-Cross has made it a point to visit every classroom and help answer questions. “Why don’t planes float?” one student wanted to know. “What exactly was the mechanical problem?” And, “Was the water cold?”

“I hope they remembered their swimming lessons from this summer,” one student told her. Said another: “I miss them.”

Students were given a chance to write letters and make drawings about the tragedy, many of which have been taped to their four friends’ desks. The one Testa-Cross remembers best is a crudely drawn plane, titled the “Heaven Plane.”

On it, she said, “There’s a phone number to call to heaven.

“I suspected this fact from the beginning, and it’s becoming clearer and clearer as time goes on,” she said. “Every single person in this building has been impacted. But we are working through it.”