Monument to Jet Crash Victims Dedicated

Bracing themselves against powerful winds and blowing sand, mourners Wednesday laid carnations on a chunk of granite beside the sea that claimed their loved ones.

A Navy band played taps and groups hugged on the rocky outcropping, clustering against the cold. Some wore lapel buttons and T-shirts bearing the smiling faces of family members they lost exactly one year before when Alaska Airlines Flight 261 plummeted into the ocean eight miles away.

About 300 friends and relatives of the victims gathered at Naval Base Ventura County for the dedication of a monument commemorating the crash. Later in the day, a memorial service was held nearby.

The stone monument will be one of two in Ventura County, with a group of family members planning one with public access on the beach at Port Hueneme. Some were upset that the Navy’s memorial is etched not just with an inscription but also with Alaska Airlines’ logo, a portrait of an Eskimo.

“They might as well have put a picture of the jackscrew on there,” said Sasha Poll, of Seattle, alluding to a part implicated in the plane’s fatal plunge.

The events completed two days of observances marking the tragedy’s first anniversary. Eighty-three passengers and five crew members died when the jet bound from Puerto Vallarta to San Francisco and Seattle plunged into the Pacific. Nobody survived.

The base was ground-zero for massive search and recovery efforts involving 70 agencies. The memorial stone was paid for by donations from the base’s military and civilian employees, as well as local businesses and civic groups.

At the 20-minute unveiling, Navy officials praised the workers for their dedication and an Alaska Airlines executive told the family members on hand of his own prolonged sorrow.

“The loss is no less, the tears still fall, the heart still aches,” said Ed White, the airline’s vice president of consumer service. In addition to the crew members, seven airline employees and 23 of their friends and relatives died on Flight 261.

Some family members blame the crash on airline negligence. A lawsuit brought by 55 families has yet to be heard.

Paige Stockley, 38, of Seattle called on the crowd to remember the source of their pain.

“This is a great opportunity to get together, to grieve together,” she told them. “But let’s not forget the real reason we’re here. We need to work together to bring the real guilty parties to justice.”

Applause erupted after she spoke.

Julio Bermudez, 36, of San Francisco said he had mixed feelings about the anniversary observances, largely paid for by the airline.

“I only wish they would have focused all this energy on the maintenance department,” he said. “I feel anger toward whichever employees decided to cut costs in an area where you can’t take shortcuts.”

Bermudez’s older brother Renato, a San Francisco firefighter, sat in seat 16F of Flight 261. On a tour this week of the wreckage, Bermudez searched for the window from which his brother may have peered as the plane went down.

“I know there wouldn’t be a message there for me,” he said, “but I just wanted to get a little closer to where he was a year ago.”

Reporters were given their first glimpse of the wreckage Wednesday.

Eighty-five percent of the aircraft is inside a 300-foot-long warehouse on a base wharf.

High winds and choppy water thwarted plans of some family members to be ferried out to the spot near Anacapa Island. But Stockley and her family, determined to be on the ocean, braved the rough seas to conduct their own memorial ceremony. An Alaska Airlines flight attendant who lives in Ventura offered them the use of a friend’s boat.

Against the wind, Stockley tossed out red roses for her mother, and yellow roses for her father.

“You think of all the places you want to be on the anniversary day,” she said. “And I wanted to be there, where it happened.”

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Times staff writers Tina Dirmann, Matt Surman and Margaret Talev, correspondent Jenifer Ragland and Associated Press contributed to this story.