Flight 261 Passengers and Crew Eulogized in Memorial Services

Of all the words uttered in all the memorials for the 88 victims of the Alaska Airlines crash, perhaps none was more eloquent or heartfelt than the simple statement of Indar Deo, whose 23-year-old son Avine Deo died in the disaster Monday.

“He was my grown son,” Deo said Saturday at a Hindu memorial service at the Hueneme Pier. “He was such a nice boy.”

It was a plaintive eulogy, one of many delivered throughout the day in memorials all over Southern California that were filled with images of quiet beauty and incomprehensible loss.

In Riverside, about 1,000 people--including more than 200 Alaska Airlines pilots and co-pilots in uniform--gathered in a warm and moving tribute to the flight crew and attendants on Flight 261.

In the waters off Port Hueneme, kayakers lay roses in the water, then watched as dozens of doves were released into the air. At another offshore ceremony, this one in Ventura, surfers held hands in a circle and were joined by a pod of dolphins arching through the waves.

In Malibu, Gov. Gray Davis and a host of religious leaders spoke at an official memorial attended by 900 people, including 600 relatives and friends of those who perished.

“I do know that someday we are likely to know the earthly cause of this tragic accident,” Davis said during the ceremony at Pepperdine University. “But we may never know the answer to our collective question: Why did it happen to me? Why did someone I love have to leave me so quickly? Why, God, did this happen?”

The ceremony in Riverside held by Alaska Airlines was at once the largest and most intimate of the services, freely mixing laughter and tears in touching reminiscences of the flight crew, especially Ted Thompson, the pilot of Flight 261, who lived in nearby Redlands with his wife of 30 years, Marilyn.

Alaska Airlines employees from as far as Anchorage convened at Harvest Christian Fellowship Church for a service that amounted to collective group therapy for the company. More than one-third of those who died on the flight from Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, to San Francisco and Seattle were either employees of Alaska Airlines or its sister company, Horizon Air, or their relatives and friends.

“I don’t have the words to describe how deeply saddened we are by the loss of our employees and customers,” said Alaska Airlines President Bill Ayer. He called Thompson and his co-pilot, Bill Tansky, “consummate aviators, highly admired by their peers.”

Also remembered at the service were flight attendants Allison Shanks, Craig Pulanco and Kristin Mills.

One pilot, Dennis Mellon of Seattle, spoke of an occasion he flew with Thompson and, on the tarmac, a catering truck bumped into the airplane wing. Thompson ran down to give the driver a piece of his mind.

“He said, ‘Do you see that airplane? That’s my airplane. . . . Do you see those passengers? Those are my passengers, and I’m in charge of keeping them safe.”

The mourners left the service with pursed lips, many of them holding one another tightly. As they gathered outside, four World War II-vintage AT-6 airplanes flew overhead and one of them peeled off alone, in the traditional salute to a missing pilot.

Symbolism played a role in other ceremonies as well.

At Pepperdine, the ceremony began with the lighting of 88 white candles on a podium surrounded by brightly colored flowers. It ended with the release of 88 white doves that soared and circled repeatedly over the coast.

Secretary of Transportation Rodney Slater read a letter of sympathy from President Clinton, telling the families and friends that the nation shares their grief.

Some mourners wore pins with pictures of relatives who perished. Others had blue ribbons that have come to symbolize their solidarity in tragedy. Coast Guard personnel in dress blue uniforms handed out roses, many of them white.

As they filed out, many mourners placed their roses in baskets so they could be ferried by Coast Guard helicopters to be spread over the crash site. The flowers were set to be dropped at 4:21 p.m.--about the time the jet plunged into the sea.

The surfers’ ceremony in Ventura was the idea of 43-year-old Rick Dowden of Ojai. His wife’s best friend had lost a son, Michael Bernard, in the crash.

About 75 surfers gathered about 100 yards offshore from Surfers Point, forming the circle around three members in the middle who each said a prayer after a moment of silence. After the prayers, the surfers tossed 60 bouquets and a floral wreath into the middle of the circle as the dolphins swam by.

“Everything sooner or later makes it back into the water,” said Art Simmons, who helped organize the ceremony. “It’s the giver and taker of life.”

About two hours later and a few miles to the south, 25 kayakers and a dozen surfers paddled out of Channel Islands Harbor. They gathered in a clumsy prayer circle near Silver Strand beach, knocked about by the moderate swells.

Kayakers held up their paddles during a moment of silence and placed flowers into the water. From a yacht traveling alongside the entourage, 80 doves were released.

Then a single kayaker paddled out to sea, symbolizing the departed passengers.

Gregg Remer of Port Hueneme, a member of the Santa Barbara Kayak Assn. and the organizer of the event, said the prayer circle was based on a Hawaiian tradition performed for divers, fishermen, surfers or kayakers lost at sea.

Not far from that gathering, about 60 friends and family of the crash victims formed yet another circle, this one on the sand near the Hueneme Pier.

The mourners came from as far as Vancouver, Canada, and Sacramento to remember their loved ones in the Hindu ceremony. Many of them Indian, they wore saris, dark suits and long black skirts.

Indar Deo, a native of Fiji, had come from Vancouver to mourn the loss of his son, who had gone to Mexico for a vacation for three days. According to Alaska Airlines, he was Prasad’s cousin. Deo said he had heard about the crash on television Monday and immediately called Alaska Airlines to find out if his son had been killed.

During the gathering, held near a memorial of flowers, candles and notes, a few of the men had their hair cut on the sand. “In my [Hindu] religion, when somebody dies, they get their hair cut,” Roselyn said. “It’s part of our tradition.”

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Times staff writers Rich Connell, Anna Gorman, Mitchell Landsberg, Robert Lopez, and Times Community News correspondent Mike McCarthy contributed to this story.