Lurched Into Grief, Families Are Left Only With Questions

The new reality comes instantly, without explanation or answers.

For Earl Dorsey, it came when his wife, Dora Menchaca, decided to fly home early. Eager to putter in her Santa Monica garden, the 45-year-old clinical researcher grabbed a last-minute seat on American Airlines Flight 77 from Washington, the plane that crashed into the Pentagon, killing all 64 people aboard.

Dorsey was so shaken that as he dressed their son for school Wednesday morning, he tried to slip underwear over the child’s head. Jaryd, 5, laughed out loud and said he’d tell mom. He was unaware his mother was dead.

Dorsey just looked at him, wondering how to say it. He spoke later about how hard it would be.

“Basically we’re going to tell him . . . that his mom loved him very much, and she will always love him, even though she can’t see him anymore,” he said as he sat at home with his 18-year-old daughter, Imani, who had driven all night from Portland, Ore. They were going to tell Jaryd together, when he got home from kindergarten.

The deaths were so abrupt, so barbaric, that no one left behind was really able to grasp the full horror. What remains are questions about what happened. Was there panic? Fainting? Full awareness as the end came?

Tom Frost may agonize the rest of his own life and never know. His 22-year-old daughter, Lisa, was one of 65 people killed when United Airlines Flight 175 knifed through the World Trade Center. Her last phone call was from Logan Airport, saying she loved him and was on her way home.

One thing he cannot talk about--or even think about yet--was what those final minutes of her life might have been like, Frost said.

“It’s all too fresh right now,” he said Wednesday at his darkened home in Rancho Santa Margarita, where he mourned with his wife, Melanie. “It’s all too fresh right now. Maybe if you asked me that question next week. Or next month.”

Roya Turan’s mother, Touri Bolourchi, was on that same flight--but hadn’t originally planned it that way. The 69-year-old retired nurse was to have flown home to Los Angeles right after Labor Day, with her husband, and got here alive. But instead, she decided to stay a few extra days in Boston to keep her daughter company.

It now torments Turan. It fills her with a guilt that may haunt her for years.

“She blames herself a lot,” said a cousin, Javad Bolourchi, who lives in San Marino. “She is all alone with the two children, and she can’t come here because there are no flights. We just keep calling her and giving her support over the phone.”

On Wednesday, at the Bolourchis’ condominium in Brentwood, mourners clad in black sat in the living room, hugging, crying and talking in hushed tones. As is Iranian custom, relatives served black Iranian tea, dates and halva, a sweet made with fried wheat flour, rose water and saffron. People hugged Touri’s husband, Akbar Bolourchi, and daughter Neda, delivering traditional kisses on the cheek.

“This is the biggest tragedy of my life. I believe I’m still in a sleep,” Bolourchi said. “I feel that one day she will come back. I’m still looking at my watch to see if it’s 11:30, if it is time for me to go to the airport and pick her up.

“I slept a few hours last night in hopes I would see her in my dreams,” he said, tears trickling silently down his cheeks. He shook his head.

“So far, I see nothing.”

Deena Burnett of San Ramon is looking for her spouse too. Thomas Burnett, 38, died aboard United Airlines Flight 93, which was loaded with 45 passengers and crew members when it crashed outside Pittsburgh after being hijacked en route from Newark, N.J., to San Francisco.

“Last night, I kept looking for him to come through the door, you know? And he didn’t come home,” she said, her chin trembling. “Part of my brain knows he’s gone, but when I got the ironing out, I started to iron his clothes.”

One Family Gets to Say a Quick Goodbye

Alice Hoglan and her sister-in-law, Kathy Hoglan, found themselves clinging to one sliver of comfort in an experience they likened to hell on Earth. They got to say goodbye to Alice’s son, Mark Bingham, a strapping college rugby player who was also aboard Flight 93.

Mark called from the cabin, ringing Kathy’s home in Saratoga, Calif., at 6:35 a.m. He hung up--or the line went dead--and he called back. “Hi Kathy,” he said, as his aunt recalled the conversation. “It’s Mark. I just wanted to tell you that I love you and that I love all of you in case I never see you again.”

He was matter-of-fact, almost calm. “I’m on a plane that’s being hijacked,” he said.

Kathy said she was “groggy and shocked and scared,” and she turned to get something to write on. She bumped into Alice, who had also come to answer the phone, and put her on the line.

“Mom,” her son began, inexplicably becoming formal, “this is Mark Bingham.” He told her he loved her.

In the aftermath, Alice and Kathy have found it difficult to sleep--only an hour or so Tuesday night. They endured it together by talking about Mark’s crazy, try-anything life, his world travels, how he once took a gun from a thug trying to rob him.

“We’ve done a lot of crying,” Kathy said.

For many families, a last goodbye becomes huge in importance. Dannette Lopez, 21, of Norwalk, never got the chance.

She was drawn into the nightmare when the first jetliner--American Airlines Flight 11--struck the World Trade Center. Her father, Maclovio “Joe” Lopez Jr., 41, was expected to return to Los Angeles from Boston that morning.

Harried phone calls brought temporary relief--he hadn’t flown American. Then came news of the United crash into the second tower. Her heart dropped. She was still making calls when her mother came in and let her know it was over, he was gone.

She holds no hatred for the terrorists, she said, sobbing. But she doesn’t understand.

“Why did they pick [September] 11th? Why pick the flight my dad was on? I just want to know why.”

Unanswerable questions like those can only heighten the anxiety and guilt that survivors feel, according to grief experts. Joe Lopez was a solid 6-footer, 250 pounds and built like a football running back. He seemed made of steel, the type who could chew nails but was soft as a puppy inside. He loved his wife, Rhonda, and two children, Dannette and Joseph, 18.

It remains unclear whether they will ever find his body. Or identify it. The man they all loved may be torn to pieces, a grisly fact of these tragedies that may make it all the more difficult for families to find closure, experts say.

Survivors often ask themselves how they could have prevented the tragedies. Why are they still alive when the person they loved is dead? Those thoughts, and images of violent death, can become loops that run over and over.

The extremely public nature of Tuesday’s crashes may make the recovery all the more difficult, experts believe. The footage is on television around the clock. News related to the terrorism will likely play out for months, possibly years, each new report a reminder of the loss.

Alberta Brandhorst was still numb, watching the United jet rip through a corner of the World Trade Center, over and over. Her son Daniel was on the plane.

“How do you react to that?” she asked in a telephone interview from her home in upstate New York. “There’s just a complete feeling of helplessness because you can’t do anything.”

Daniel, 42, and his partner, Ronald Gamboa, 33, were traveling home to Los Angeles with their adopted son, David. Alberta thought her son was flying the previous night. She found out the truth after receiving a cryptic phone message from one of Daniel’s colleagues at work, offering support.

Her three other children had already gathered at the house--one drove in from Michigan--by the time the deaths were confirmed. The hours since have been a whirlwind of fear, grief, love and venomous anger. She said she whipsaws between wanting time alone and needing her loved ones near.

“I need to collect my thoughts, just to make it real,” she said. “It’s hard to make it real.”

Joshua Miller, a grief specialist at Smith College in Northampton, Mass., noted that traumatic sudden deaths can leave mourners in a dream-like state. From there, some plunge into severe depression. Not everyone reacts the same, however. Some may even find a sense of purpose--and hope--in reaching out to other sufferers or by becoming activists, much as women have in Mothers Against Drunk Driving.

Channeling Anger Into Public Activism

Loved ones of those killed aboard Pan Am Flight 103, which exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland, with 270 people aboard, are still in touch with one another 13 years later. Many have been involved in the arduous campaign to prosecute the terrorists from Libya believed responsible for the tragedy.

“It was very difficult,” said Eileen Monetti, who lost her son, Rick, in that tragedy. “It’s still difficult. These people in the next couple of months are going to feel an enormous amount of loss and an enormous amount of anger. The anger that builds up inside of you is indescribable.”

Anger comes as you ache and miss your lost son and realize it was all preventable. For the families of the Pan Am victims, Tuesday’s terrorist attacks offered a perverse kind of vindication: They have tried for years to raise alarms about the inadequacy of security measures at American airports.

Although they played a key lobbying role in the adoption of the Airport Security Act of 1991, many have never been satisfied with its implementation.

“We have consistently told our government over the years you are doing a pretty poor job,” said Bert Ammerman, whose brother, Tom, died over Lockerbie. “Unfortunately, as a result of yesterday’s attack, our government realizes that.”

The activists from the Pan Am disaster managed to win a civil suit against the airline for its own security inadequacies. They are still pursuing a lawsuit against the government of Libya.

Being part of such efforts is often extremely useful, grief therapists say. So is therapy. So are rituals--holding memorial services, building small monuments, writing in journals. But grief is tricky. It comes and goes, never seems to follow the linear course set forth in some books about it.

It prods some to become better people, drives others to despair, even suicide. It leaves some with the sticky feeling that death is always there, waiting to happen again.

For those stung by Tuesday’s events, “the scars are never going to go away,” said Miller, the grief specialist. However, “people learn to live with scars and with pieces of their hearts ripped out. We continue on because there are other people we love . . . [people] we need to take care of and be available to.”

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Times staff writers David Ferrell, Doug Smith and Rebecca Trounson contributed to this report.