Jet Crash Still Burns in Memories : Loss of 156 a Year Ago Recalled, Mourned in Detroit, Orange County

Robert McKellar observed the anniversary alone Tuesday, taking the day off from work to sleep late and stare at the bay from his Newport Beach bungalow.

A year ago Aug. 16, McKellar and his brother, David, were running late to catch a plane in Detroit when their car overheated and broke down. When they arrived at the terminal to check in for Northwest Airlines Flight 255, bound for Phoenix and Orange County, the stunned ticket agent told them the plane had just crashed. All but one of the 155 passengers and crew members died in the tragedy just beyond the end of Runway 3C. Two motorists on the interstate highway where the plane crashed were also killed.

Tuesday, on the anniversary of the fiery disaster, one of the worst aviation tragedies in the nation’s history, McKellar contemplated his good fortune.

“I don’t know if it was luck or God’s fate,” said McKellar, 38, a design engineer with Rockwell Corp. His life has changed, he said, and the “little things” that used to irritate don’t matter as much anymore. “It’s a cliche, but you realize how fragile life is. I appreciate things a whole lot more these days.”

Still Coping With Loss

But luck cuts both ways, and the family members of a half-dozen Orange County people who died aboard Flight 255 are still coping with the loss.

“Holidays are particularly tough,” Reid Bushong said softly about his son, Rhett, who was on the flight, returning to Mission Viejo early from a family reunion in Ohio to begin fall football practice at Saddleback College. He would have been 20 last Friday. “It’s an emotional roller coaster some days,” said his father, a Newport Beach schoolteacher. “Just when it seems OK, you come across his picture. . . . “

The Bushong family--Reid, his wife and his two other sons--spent Tuesday night with about 50 friends at a private gathering at a home in south Orange County, remembering Rhett and his days as a standout athlete at Mission Viejo High School. In Romulus, Mich., a suburb of Detroit, six of Bushong’s Midwest relatives planned to attend a twilight memorial service at the crash site, Middlebelt Road under Interstate 94 on a grassy area known as “The Hill.”

About 1,000 friends and relatives gathered for the memorial on the hillside where the twin-engine MD-80 aircraft crashed less than one minute after takeoff. Bouquets, each bearing the name of a victim, spelled out “255.”

As shadows gathered, the name of the first victim, William Acker of Phoenix, was read at 8:46 p.m. EDT--the hour and minute Flight 255 crashed, killing all but one aboard the plane and the two drivers who were on the interstate.

Friends or relatives held penlights high as the names of their loved ones were read, then lowered the penlights to shoulder height as the rest of the names were read.

The sole survivor of the crash was 4-year-old Cecelia Cichan, whose parents and brother died in the crash. No Cichan family members were present Tuesday, but they were represented by two employees at the University of Michigan Medical Center, where Cecelia spent 68 days recovering from her injuries.

Cecelia is living with an aunt and uncle in Birmingham, Ala.

“I’m sure their thoughts are going to be with everyone here,” said Catherine Cureton, a hospital spokeswoman.

“Where else could we be today?” said Betty Polec, whose newly married daughter and son-in-law died in the crash. The Detroit woman is co-founder of a support group for the victims’ relatives, named Flight 255/Their Spirit Lives On.

“We’re here together, we’re here as a group. That’s what holds us together, she said.”

Planning for the memorial has been under way for months, said her husband, Chet Polec.

“It’s given us a way to channel our emotions,” he said.

“To describe the loss is impossible. I just keep wondering why.”

Federal investigators blamed the crash, which occurred moments after takeoff in windy conditions, on pilot error and a breakdown in a cockpit warning system. Officials at the National Transportation Safety Board said the pilots failed to deploy the plane’s wing flaps and slats to gain lift while taking off from Detroit’s Metropolitan Airport, and the computerized warning system failed to alert them to the error.

A Northwest spokesman said the Minneapolis-based air carrier has since changed its preflight procedures for pilots, requiring an inspection of the warning system before each flight. Before the Detroit tragedy, warning devices were tested once a day, Northwest spokesman Redmond Tyler said.

Dozens of lawsuits were filed against Northwest by families of victims, but so far none of the cases have been settled, Tyler said. “Litigation is part of such a tragedy,” he said, declining to comment on specific dollar amounts sought in the claims.

Tyler did say that Northwest provided free transportation to some family members who traveled to Detroit for Tuesday’s memorial service. And the carrier has retired Flight 255 as a route designation, which is a “universal practice” in the industry after a crash, Tyler said.

“It doesn’t make sense to keep using it and at some point have one of the family members walk through a terminal and see it flashing up on the board,” Tyler said. “It might prove too traumatic. They’ve been through enough already.”

A year’s passing has done little to ease the grief for Mary Ann Pearson, whose brother, Ralph Tombasco, and his wife, Lisa, were on Flight 255. The Tombascos were like many of those who boarded the jetliner. It was a Sunday night crowd in August--casually dressed vacationers and family travelers, not the business crowd of midweek flights. The couple had just finished a two-week trip to Upstate New York, visiting friends and family, and were heading to their newly purchased home in a quiet El Toro neighborhood.

Unable to Forget

Tombasco’s sister has been unable to shake the loss.

“Ralph was the kind of guy that would call you every week,” she said Tuesday from her home in Corning, N.Y. “Sundays are bad because he would always call on Sunday night.”

A day rarely goes by, Pearson said, when she does not think of her brother. On her way to work, she drives past the cemetery where he is buried. Memorial scholarships, she said, have been set up under the couple’s names at the two high schools they attended in Corning.

“There’s a lot of sadness,” Tombasco’s father, Rafael, said Tuesday. “We miss him very much. He’s in our prayers. . . . “

The senior Tombasco and his wife, Rosemary, went to Italy for six months after their son’s death, and were consoled by relatives there. The couple also had an audience at the Vatican with the Pope at which they talked about their son’s death.

Like many families of victims, the Tombascos have sued Northwest Airlines, but declined to give details.

Should the Bushongs receive money as a result of the suit they have filed, Reid Bushong said, part of it will be used to establish a scholarship fund at Saddleback College. After the crash, Bushong said, family and friends donated about $3,000. The money, Bushong said, will eventually be used to help complete a children’s play area at the church the family attends in the Saddleback area.

“Rhett loved to play sports,” his father recalled. “He was active all the time--that’s what is so difficult. He had a lot to offer.”

Some of those touched by Flight 255 have found it difficult to fly again.

David McKellar, who with his brother, narrowly missed boarding the jet when his parents’ 1983 Oldsmobile blew a radiator hose, said he is reminded of the crash every day when he drives past John Wayne Airport on his way to work. Two weeks ago, the Dana Point resident flew to Detroit to visit his 5-year-old son.

It was his first flight since the accident, and when he slipped into his seat in Detroit for the trip home, he was nervous. He was flying alone, and he closed his eyes and prayed, he said.

“I kept thinking, ‘It can’t happen again. It just can’t.’ ”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.