Families to Honor Dead in EgyptAir Tragedy

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, 200 miles off the coast of Nantucket, Mass.

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

Max Bowman says his grieving remains private, and he feels no need to share it with hundreds of strangers. 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 unalterably 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.

The decision to go to Rhode Island has been difficult for survivors. But families of a majority of the American victims have arranged to be there, with plans to participate in at least some events.

“It’s a way of remembering,” Bowman said. “Maybe this is about something finally being closed.” He will be joined on the trip by daughter Lori Fernandez and her husband and two children.

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 also were 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 Egypt’s pyramids and to cruise the Nile. From Irvine were the Mansours--Effat, 64, and Virginia, 59--embarking on a vacation to see his family in Egypt.

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 the tragedy.

Even if it is just the 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. 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 says, 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.”

For some, the trip would generate 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 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 were too difficult.

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

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

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. The stone will stand next to 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 a private ceremony for the interment of unidentified remains.

Through DNA testing, federal transportation investigators last month completed identification of some remains of almost all the dead.

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

Though the crash took place off Nantucket, more than 100 miles south, Newport was chosen for the permanent memorial because that city was federal headquarters for the disaster in the weeks after the crash. Also, Newport Mayor Richard C. Sardella told the Providence Journal, “It is an honor.”

Although EgyptAir is the target of numerous lawsuits stemming from the crash, it agreed to pay expenses for immediate family members from the United States and Canada to attend. It also has underwritten the cost of the memorial.

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Times library staff members Lois Hooker and Sheila Kern contributed to this story.