Flight 990 Survivors’ Sojourn

A year ago Halloween Day, Max Bowman of Huntington Beach kissed his wife Judith goodbye at the airport as she headed off for an overseas trip with dear friends. And 11 hours later--”11 hours that changed my life”--he learned that her plane, EgyptAir Flight 990, had mysteriously crashed into the Atlantic, about 60 miles off the coast of Nantucket, Mass.

All 217 passengers and crew were killed. Of the 100 Americans on board, 10 were identified as being from Southern California, all from Orange County.

Max Bowman said his grieving remains a private process, and he feels no need to share it with hundreds of people he’s never met. Even so, he and other family members will be at Tuesday’s one-year observance ceremonies in Newport, R.I., where the EgyptAir victims will be honored with a permanent memorial.

The gathering in Rhode Island--and the anniversary of the tragedy--are filled with emotional turmoil for those whose lives were inalterably changed by the crash. The memorial, taking place over two days, will include a service overlooking the ocean, dedication of a memorial stone, the burial of unidentified remains and a visit to the hangar where wreckage of the plane is stored.

Deciding whether to go to Rhode Island has been difficult for survivors. But families of a majority of the American victims have made arrangements to be there, with plans to participate in some, if not all, the events.

“It’s a way of remembering,” said Bowman. “Maybe this is about something finally being closed.” He will be joined by daughter, Lori Fernandez, and her husband and two children. Tuesday’s ceremonies, Bowman said, “may somehow assist us, my family and myself, in the grieving process.”

Killed along with Judith Bowman, 57, were the other members of her regular Thursday night card-playing group--Beverly Grant, 82, of Santa Ana, Sheila Jaffee, 63, of Huntington Beach, and Tobey Seidman, 71, of Irvine. Three couples from Orange County were also on board. From Dana Point were the Foths--Ullrich, 69, and Dorothy, 67--and the Peevers--Art, 65, and Barbara, 68--four best friends who had long wanted to see the Great Pyramids and cruise the Nile. From Irvine, were the Mansours--Effat, 64, and Virginia, 59--embarking on a vacation to see his family in Egypt.

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For Linda Durden of Laguna Niguel, the Foths’ daughter, making the flight to Newport with her two brothers and their families will seem surreal--”like following in my parents’ footsteps”--but necessary to find something that is real about this tragedy.

Even if it’s just the plane wreckage.

“I know it seems weird, but I want to see it; it’s something tangible,” Durden said. “My parents were here one day and then they just vanished. Somewhere out there this just happened. That wreckage is at least something that I can see, to identify it happened to them.”

Steven Grant, an Irvine optometrist, will make the trip to Rhode Island with his wife, Elaine, as a way, he said, of honoring his mother, Beverly Grant.

“But I can’t tell you right now whether I will go see the wreckage,” he said. “That’s an emotional decision I’ll have to make once I get there.”

Grant said it’s been difficult to explain to people why he is going at all. Others in his family have decided not to make the trip.

“It’s just something I feel compelled to do,” he said. “No question it’s going to be disturbing, a very trying time.”

For some, the trip would simply raise too much anxiety.

“I just can’t do it; it’s too painful,” said Gail Seidman of Walnut Creek, daughter of Tobey Seidman. “I need to save all my strength just to get on with living.”

Seidman knows that she and her two brothers, who share that view, will be thinking about those at the memorial on Tuesday. Part of her wishes she were emotionally stronger so she could go.

“But this has been such a really tough year for us,” she said. “We just miss her so much.”

Beverly and Alan Peever of Mission Viejo have a different reason for choosing not to go, though they wanted to be there as a tribute to Alan’s parents. But Art and Barbara Peever left three adult children and five grandchildren; the logistics of sending everyone was too difficult.

So the Peevers, Beverly said, have chosen instead to hold their own private ceremony that day. It will be at an undisclosed location, just family and friends. So they can all be together.

“We just miss them so dearly,” she said, breaking into tears. “There really hasn’t been much closure for any of us.”

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On Tuesday, the anniversary of the crash, a morning service will take place on a high knoll in the center of Newport’s Brenton Point State Park, which overlooks Narragansett Bay where it meets the open sea.

A six-foot stone honoring the crash victims will stand by the park’s flagpole. Next to it is a long-standing Mariner’s Memorial, which is dedicated to anyone lost at sea off Rhode Island’s coast.

In the afternoon, family members of the victims can take a bus to The Island Cemetery in the middle of Newport for interment of unidentified remains.

Through DNA testing, federal transportation investigators last month completed identification of some remains of almost all the dead. In some cases the remains were meager, but all that were identified will be shipped to family members in November.

The day after the ceremony, family members have been invited to see the wreckage, dredged from the ocean bottom 360 foot deep and now sitting in an airplane hangar at nearby Quonset Point. Many are expected to skip that part of the planned events.

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Closure was one idea behind the memorial. Its genesis came in part from a father who lost a daughter in a different tragedy. A daughter of Hans Ephraimson of New York was on a Korean Airlines flight shot down by accident by the Soviet Union in 1983.

Ephraimson began devoting his time to helping others who had lost family in major disasters. Jim Brokaw of Ogden Dunes, Ind., who lost his father and stepmother on the EgyptAir flight, learned of Ephraimson’s efforts and sought his help in organizing a family association. It now represents at least half the families of the crash victims, and even has its own Web site. The Internet site is devoted to updates on the crash and personal messages so members can stay in touch.

It was Brokaw who organized a planning committee of family members to help prepare the memorial ceremonies and work with EgyptAir.

Though the crash took place off Nantucket, Newport was chosen for the permanent memorial because that city had been federal headquarters for the disaster. Also, Newport Mayor Richard C. Sardella told the Providence-Journal, “it is an honor.”

The mayor will be among the speakers, along with Brokaw, Ephraimson, and Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Almond. Brenton Point’s park manager Dick Massey said those in attendance can look southeast from the flagpole in the direction of where Flight 990 crashed. More than 500 people are expected to attend, not just family and friends, but also many who worked on recovery teams or were involved with the investigation.

The foundation that supports the nearby Mariner’s Memorial has been instrumental in helping with the EgyptAir monument, Brokaw said. Its marker is encircled by stones. The EgyptAir crash memorial will be fronted by 217 bricks with the names of the victims, grouped together by couples and by where they came from.

Written on the monument stone will be “May God’s eternal light shine upon them.” It will also say, in English, French and Arabic, “They are not gone from us.”

Although EgyptAir is the target of many lawsuits stemming from the crash, it agreed to pay expenses for immediate family members from the United States and Canada to attend. It has also underwritten the cost of the memorial. On Monday, the airline also agreed to pay the travel costs of families of the 89 Egyptians killed aboard that Halloween Day flight.

A similar ceremony had been scheduled in Cairo for Tuesday. But it’s been postponed until some of the remains of the Egyptian passengers are returned to Egypt.

Receiving remains has been of primary importance to all family members. Not having bodies recovered has added to the difficulty of coming to terms with the deaths.

Max Bowman and his family are among those who will receive remains. He knows that what’s being sent is just fragments. But how much is not important, he said.

The family will hold a closed-casket burial ceremony when Judith’s remains are sent back to Orange County.

“Her spirit and her soul are already gone; our bodies just carry us through our adventures in life,” he said. “But at least her family will have a permanent place to visit. That will be especially important for her grandchildren.”

Bowman wanted to be sure that a message comes from all this:

“Don’t take your loved ones for granted; let them know every day you love them.”

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Library staff members Lois Hooker and Sheila A. Kern contributed to this story.