If I tell you I was an English major, and got a master’s degree in English -- purely for the fun of it -- you may not think that what I’m about to say is so odd. When I learned last Monday that 228 lives were lost when Air France Flight 447 plane crashed into the Atlantic Ocean, I thought back to “Lycidas,” a pastoral elegy by the 17th century poet, John Milton.
Milton wrote the poem as a memorial to Edward King, a friend who had drowned in a shipwreck off the coast of Wales. King was heading home from Christ’s College, Cambridge to Ireland for a visit with family when the accident occurred. The line that has always stayed in my head -- but also my heart -- is “he must not flote upon his watrie beare unwept, and welter to the parching wind without the meed of some melodious teare.”
Because Edward King’s body was never recovered, it could not be placed in a coffin on a funeral bier to be wheeled up the aisle of a house of worship, and ultimately buried in a graveyard or cemetery. Sadly, the same is likely to be true of many of the 228 people who were headed earlier this week from Rio de Janeiro to Paris.
Understandably initial news coverage focused on whether terrorism might have been involved, and then questions about mechanical or human error. Still I found it frustrating that I had to wait until the next day’s New York Times to learn who had been on board Flight 447.
The Times headline writer, understanding what it is people really want to know, titled the story “Among the Victims on Air France Flight, Doctors, Dancers and Royalty.” But I’ve found the ordinary people more interesting. A photo provided by family members shows a good-looking, middle-aged geologist – working for an energy company – and his wife, equally attractive. They were bound for a Paris vacation before he was to begin a training seminar in Spain.
The story references the loss of eight children, including an 11 year old boy, Alexander Bjoroy, the son of an oil industry ex-patriot, returning to prep school in England after a visit with his family. By all accounts, the boy, who previously attended school wherever his father was working, including the British School in Bogotá, Columbia, was a gifted athlete much loved by other kids.
Tragedies of such proportions typically elicit stories of people blessed by the fate of missed connections. They also elicit plans to build memorials to those whose lives were lost. When Daphne wrote for Newsday on Long Island, I was especially proud of her story documenting the grief of the families of TWA Flight 800 victims and their efforts to build a magnificent granite memorial in a little park overlooking that portion of the Atlantic that claimed their lives. That flight, bound for Paris, crashed shortly after takeoff in July 1996.
Children were on that flight, too, including 16 members of the French club at Montoursville High School in Montoursville, Pennsylvania, and their five chaperones, bound for a summer exchange program in France. They got their own memorial on the grounds of the school. It’s a statue of an angel in a grove of 21 trees, one for each of the victims.
Memorials are important, and I don’t know what if any memorials last Monday’s crash will produce, and if so, where they will be. The only guaranteed memorial is in the hearts of those who survive.
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