Pittsburgh Post-Gazette from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania • Page 27

D-3 PITTSBURGH POST-GAZLTTE SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 1995 -n or -LL vvJJ--U I i i 11 tore 1 TN TKTVn TITVTN MO V' 77ie victims' lives ended in an instant, but the lives of those left behind have dragged on in the anguish of lost love, unfulfilled potential and unanswered questions about the crash. Here are some of their stories Joel Thompson sedatives to get her through the flight. She will visit Pittsburgh this week for the memorial service, she said, and plans to visit the crash site for the first time. She will be coming by train. 1 anine Katonah moved fast.

Five days after the crash that killed her husband, businessman Joel Thompson, 61, of Oak Park, 111., she sued USAir for negligence, making her the first of the USAir Flight 427 families to do so. Since then, Katonah has amended her complaint to include Boeing. She has asked the court to block USAir from destroying Stephen M. Shortley he ring on the delicate gold chain around Joanne Shortley's neck dangles close to her heart. It once belonged to Stephen M.

Shortley, her husband of 20 years, who was killed on evidence related to the crash. She has agreed to pay half the costs for storage of the airplane's remains and she has spoken out in favor of a family advocacy proposal that would provide families with immediate professional care in the event of a crash. "My goal in the lawsuit is that the cause of the crash be determined," Katonah said. "That's why I want to push the issue. At the Flight 427 during a business trip for Ernst t'j Young.

When the wedding band was returned to Joanne, it was still inscribed with their initials and wedding date, but it was no longer round. It been bent into an oval. (, Other belongings given to 1 John BealePosl-Gazette Joanne were his wallet, credit; cards, Daytimer the pages torn down to Sept. 8, with information about three other airlines and a note from the couplej daughter, Lisa. "I love you, Daddy.

Have, a safe 1 u. i mm if 4' These stories were written by Staff Writers Barbara Vancheri, Diana Nelson Jones, Sally Kalson, Bill Steigerwald, Ed Masley and Jane Crawford. National Transportation Safety Board hearings, everyone who testified pointed the finger at somebody else. "The least I can do is bring some sense that this is not going to happen to other families. There is no other avenue to address the cause and the responsibility than Above, photographs of crash victims reserved the seats tor their families at the NTSB hearing on the crash in January.

At left, is a photograph of Paul McSherry, husband of Carol McSherry. At right is Stephen M. Shortley, husband of Joanne Shortley. At right, the Shortley family: Stephen, Joanne, and children Daniel and Lisa. Below, from left, Lisa Ferm, who was killed in the crash with friend Colleen Smith and parents Lois and Landvis Ferm.

trip, it read. "It was just as clear as 4owJa be," Shortley, 39, said. "The stuff was in perfect shape. You couldn't even tell there had been a plane crash." She and Steve, 37 when he died, had been'teejn-age sweethearts who married two weeks after Joanne's high school graduation. Lisa, now-iaj was born a year and a half later.

A son, Daniel, came a year after. Both children are in college and live at home. Faced with the prospect of burying an empty-, casket, Shortley solicited contributions from friends and relatives. "My husband was too fulfot life and too full of humor and too full of love-to have that as his last tribute, so we decided, to 4p, something different." She invited mourners to bring somethingithat reminded them of Steve. The contributions included letters and photos, Marlboros, Steelers ticket stubs and a pizza box (a nod to lunches with former co-workers at Koppers, Steve's previous employer).

Jn, Also placed in the casket was a cross-stitch sampler Shortley made years ago. It showed. aa-ther with a daughter and son and the saying, "Anybody can be a father, but it takes someone special to be a daddy." Shortley, who lives in Ross but spent most-of her married life in Brighton Heights, has heeft, keeping a journal since shortly after the She hopes to turn it into a book about young widow. "It's been very therapeutic, and I think it would help others. No one prepares you for the death of a spouse.

No one warns you about the total isp tion you feel around others. You never imagiheii can happen to you, especially in your through litigation, bo I will not be settling with USAir." Speaking with a reporter one day before taking her youngest daughter to college for the first time, Katonah said her feelings were nothing like what she had always hoped to feel on that day. "This was supposed to be a time for my husband and I to enjoy our freedom," she said. "Now I'm facing it alone, and it is not a positive time at all. "I have not had a happy day since he died.

My children and his have had a difficult struggle, but I think it's hardest for me. They all have their own lives, while he was an integral part of my life every day." Thompson's three children, ages 30 to 35, live out of state. Katonah said her husband would have rejoiced in the recent engagement of his daughter. "He was a very caring parent," she said. "When his children suffered, so did he, and knowing Renee was alone was hard for him.

He wanted her to know love." Katonah said the crash occurred shortly after she'd begun retooling her professional skills after 17 years at home raising children. "My master's degree in French and education wasn't helping me in the job market, so we decided I would go back to school to study Spanish and English as a second language. I'm looking now for a teaching job." Her daughter Emily's high school graduation in June was "a sad, somber occasion," she said. "I kept remembering how happy the last graduation was when my husband was with us." Katonah said she had flown twice since the crash, one time to visit her husband's mother in a nursing home. Both times, she said, she needed A 1 fr SEE ANGUISH, As lime passes, families find comfort in fond memories MeMn Henry at 36, his wife and children are moving to another house in another town.

"We can't get on here," said Lou Ann Henry of herself and her four children, ages 9 to 17. "We keep waiting for him to come home." So they've sold the house in Reynoldsville, Jefferson County, and will move to Du Bois at the end of the month. It's only 10 miles away, still close enough to see friends and family. "I've lived in Reynoldsville all my life," said Lou Ann, whose husband was an electronics manager with Gas-barre Products Inc. in Du Bois, "but I can't stay here.

The children are not coping well. It's like he's going to walk in the door any minute. We're hoping this move will put an end to it." She said her children started counseling but quit because it wasn't helping. The children talk about their dad a lot and visit the cemetery frequently. They've visited the crash site three times.

Family events have been difficult, such as the wedding of her husband's brother. "He had all his brothers stand up for him," Lou Ann said. "My son, Buddy, took his dad's place. It was hard." The family of X. Daniel Kafcas, 62, was thrown off track by his death.

dad playing, she walked back into the house. "She said she has her good days and bad days still." For Clem Eller of Murrysville, it is not the big events of the past year, such as birthdays or holidays, that have been the most difficult. It is the routine errand or task that fathers and sons do together that remind him of his son, James Eller, 38, of Plum, who perished on Flight 427 returning home from a business trip for Belson Co. "It's been awful rough," said the elder Eller. "Little things bother you, like the things you would do together, but not really think about." In the past year, he said, the family has rallied around James' widow, Christine, and the couple's three sons, Jamie, Matthew, and Joshua, 4.

"I've been spending a lot of time with the boys. Going fishing, doing stuff like that," Eller said. And although the family has tried to come to grips with the tragedy, the inability of the National Transportation Safety Board to determine a cause for the crash is nagging. "It's just rough, not knowing what happened," Eller said. DAYS OF DISARRAY One year after the crash that killed FATHERS AND SONS Howard Mcllvried works at the same place where his son, Timothy Mcllvried, was employed when he died in the crash of USAir Flight 427 the U.S.

Department of Energy complex in South Park. His office sits next to the building where his son had an office. "Sometimes that hits home," Mcllvried said. "I go to meetings I know he would have been at if he were still alive They talk about this project he was working on, it keeps coming up in meetings. It reminds you of the situation." One thing that makes remembering easier is the fact that he and his wife, Shirley, are close with their other children a son who lives a mile away from their McCandless home, a daughter in Albuquerque, N.M., and a son in medical school in Philadelphia.

The family also finds comfort in good memories. At Timothy's memorial service, 600 people showed up so many that some of them had to crowd into a basement to watch the service on closed-circuit TV. Friends who came from all over the nation stayed long after the service ended, talking about Timothy's love of jokes and sports. Mcllvried likes to talk, too, about his son being an Eagle Scout, of being surprised when family members cleaned "He was a teacher for all of'WSTSaid his wife, Joan, who lives near Wilfees; Barre. "None of us made a decision without talking to him.

Now just; trying to hold things together." At the time of the crash, the Kafpasf-children, Alexandra, 21, and pher, 26, were enrolled in the University of Illinois, but have since dropped out "They just lost it," says Because her husband worked in Chicago for United Airlines, and be- cause her brother was a corporate pftot, flying was a way of life for the Kafcas family. Not anymore. "It's very different now," Joan said. "My son and daughter can't fly. Ihavfl a difficult time with it, but I have to.

if J.yf want to see my kids. Every time the. plane is at 6,000 feet the altitude- Flight 427 was when it went out of sit there and wonder what it mustiaave been like for him. "For me, that's the hardest" Brett Van Bortel, the husband.Ot Joan Lahart Van Bortel, has spent last year mourning the loss of hjs.vyjfe,, establishing a scholarship fund-Kvier. name and putting his life back together.

"I get extremely angry, then lJbeVi come grief-stricken," he said from Lisle, SEE MEMORIES, NEXTfAGE out his apartment and found it stuffed with sports gear. He said they must remember to keep busy. "You can either curl up and die," he said, "or you make a decision to go on." Frank Varisco and his father, Mario, have collected newspaper and magazine articles about Bernie Varisco and put together a video remembrance. But Frank hasn't been able to watch the tape. It's too hard to hear the voice of his younger brother.

"When the time is right, I'll know," Frank said. Tarentum resident Bernie Varisco, 31 was in Chicago on business for Vanco Machine and Tool Co. of O'Hara, where he was sales manager. He left behind a wife, Denise, and a daughter who celebrated her first birthday and a son who turned 3 in the past year. The birthdays were "really quite difficult for my sister-in-law and my mother.

The holidays were brutal, too," said Frank, 35, an electrical engineer from Mars. Sometimes, though, it's the unexpected glimpse into the past that proves painful. "At summer picnics, we used to go out and play Jarts lawn darts. My brother used to play lawn darts, he was pretty good at that." When Denise spotted Frank and his 44.