The Post- Standard – Syracuse NY - CNY
Activism from the ashes
Sunday, December 9, 2001
By Jeanne Albanese
Joan Pontante buried her brother, his wife and their three children at Fairdale Cemetery in Hannibal in 1987. She places wooden doves on the graves to mark the anniversary of their deaths, yet Pontante finds more comfort on a patch of grass next to a Detroit highway. That's where Northwest Flight 255, bound for Phoenix, crashed seconds after takeoff from Detroit Metro Airport. The plane exploded, killed 156 people, including Bill Best, 36; Kathy Johnston, 32; Billy Jr., 5; Hillary, 3; and 4-month-old Katelyn.
The Best family - who left earlier that day from Hancock International Airport - were seated over the jet's fuel tanks. Pontante knows their remains were unrecognizable. What was recovered of the Best family was shipped to Fulton in four sealed caskets. No one told Pontante exactly what each box contained. She never asked.
"My family is in Detroit," she says, "on that ground." Best, 12 years Pontante's junior, had been like a son to her after their mother died when Best was a teen-ager. For four years after the crash, Pontante couldn't say his name without bursting into tears.
From her pain grew purpose; a crusade for air safety and a commitment to help heal families who have lost loved ones in air disasters. Her mission puts her on the phone with grieving families at all hours.
Last month it was a call from a man who lost his nephew when American Airlines Flight 587 crashed in the Rockaway section of Queens. In September, it landed her in a hotel room in Washington, D.C., where for 12 days she commiserated with victims of the Sept. 11 Pentagon attack.
It started when family members from Northwest 255 formed a support group. Over the next eight years, the group led a collaboration of nine other air-crash groups to form the National Air Disaster Alliance/Foundation in 1995. NADA/F is a nonprofit organization working for safety, security, survivability and support for victims' families.
"People say get on with your life," Pontante says. "Well, that was your life."
Advocacy has helped her heal.
A converted bedroom in her Fulton home serves as her headquarters. Newspaper clippings, crash reports, photos and training manuals clutter the room. An active member since the inception, Pontante's dedication reached new levels after the death of her husband, Jerry, in 1998. Now, it consumes her. After her daily 5 a.m. workout, Pontante, mother of four and grandmother of five, buries herself in writing speeches and letters, attending crisis intervention training and federal aviation and State Department meetings. She serves as a board vice president and team leader for the organization's Family Support Team. The 63-year-old former hairdresser spoke at a state symposium on aviation emergency management in Los Angeles and at a meeting of international aircraft designers in Poland last year. In August, she led a training session for JetBlue's family care team.
When four planes were hijacked and crashed on Sept. 11, NADA/F's Family Support Team went on alert. Pontante packed, ready to travel to a crash site. The team wasn't called into action that day. Two weeks later, NADA/F held its annual meeting in Washington, D.C. One night Pontante and several other members dropped off brochures at the Pentagon's family command center, set up in a nearby hotel. One of the generals invited them to stay.
Pontante and the group put up their banner and spread out the organization's literature on a table in a hotel conference room. For the next 12 days, in a room decorated in tributes to victims from American Airlines Flight 77's crash into the Pentagon, they listened. They waited for mourners to approach them. Pontante knew, eventually, family members would need to talk. She learned that the hard way; no one was there for her.
When Northwest 255 crashed 14 years ago, it was the nation's second worst air disaster. There were no books or support groups or counselors at the scene. Northwest mishandled the crash; Pontante phoned the airline repeatedly, but they never called back. When Pontante and her father traveled to Mesa, Ariz., to close up Best's home, they found his answering machine filled with messages from lawyers.
NADA/F's priorities are twofold; to improve airline response to victims' families while protecting them from unwanted contact. The group pushed for and helped pass the Aviation Disaster Family Assistance Act in 1996.
Lending an ear is another priority. "We want family members not to suffer the pain we've endured," Pontante says. Nothing can compare to the aftermath of an air disaster. Families must absorb the violent and random nature of death, endure years of investigations and litigation and, worst of all, bury their dead without ever seeing them.
All air disasters trigger bad memories for Pontante, but Sept. 11 felt different. She knew, especially for World Trade Center victims, families would receive very few remains of their loved ones. It's a void she still feels. "I never got to see them in the casket," she says. "There's no closure. You relive it."
Pontante clings instead to small mementos she collected from her brother's home; his ceramic coffee mug sits on a ledge above her sink; a Cabbage Patch doll, a pink poodle and two Raggedy Ann dolls, each stitched with "Hillary" and "Katelyn" in red thread across the aprons, line the bed in her spare bedroom. "If we could have brought dust home, we would have," she says.
Whenever Pontante flies, she wears two buttons of Best and his family over her heart. She asks to speak with the pilots to tell them about her family and to remind them to review their checklist to avoid the errors that caused the Northwest crash.
Pontante wore her buttons to the Pentagon family center, which buzzed with military figures and dazed family members. She introduced herself and the group to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld as he passed through. When she told him about her brother's family, he took her hand in his and told her how sorry he was and that he remembered the crash.
But Pontante never mentioned Best to mourning family members. She didn't share with them that Best had come home to Fulton for his baby's christening; that he had arrived a week earlier than planned because he had just received a promotion; or that his camera survived the crash, leaving her with photos of her nieces and nephew visiting the Burnet Park Zoo days before they died.
That's rule No. 1. Don't talk about your own crash, no matter what emotions break over you.
Barb Skudlarick, director of the Family Support Team, has often watched Pontante push down her own feelings to hug, console and listen. "I consider her to be one of our best ambassadors," Skudlarick says. "She radiates a human love for people, and she rises above her own personal loss to help people. She does it in such a genuine (way.)"
Rule No. 2, Pontante says, is to let the victim approach you. Then, listen to how wonderful their family members were. "If they want to talk or cry, I understand," she says. "I'm not going tell you to get on with your life."
One man in Washington wandered around, still wearing his jacket wet from the rain. His mother and father had been on Flight 77, and he carried a folder of photographs. He finally sat down at NADA/F's table and spread out his collection.
For 3½ hours, he spoke about his parents and shared pictures of his family standing in front of a home they recently built. Pontante noticed the beautiful stone walls and told the man her husband had been a mason. Soon, the two engaged in a lengthy conversation about stone. The man's demeanor changed. "We saw a sparkle in his eyes," Skudlarick says. "We saw some kind of happiness, a nice memory."
Pontante hopes, in some small way, her conversation helps the man down the long road toward healing. It is a journey she knows is fraught with roadblocks. Pontante thinks about Best and his family every day. After 14 years, one question still nags her: Just what did she bury in those caskets?
Some days she fantasizes that five intact bodies were delivered to her grieving family. Other times her mind stumbles upon grislier images. About six years ago, Pontante discovered that a federal law gives her the right to request the coroner's report that contains the answer. Someday she'll sit at the computer in her office, the one where she's written dozens of letters on behalf of victims' rights, and exercise one of her own. Someday.
"It's almost like in my heart I don't want to finalize," she says. "I don't want that final picture of nothing."
© 2001 The Post-Standard. Used with permission.
