‘The worst event of my life’: Families, first responders gather on 45th anniversary of American Airlines Flight 191 disaster

Family members, first responders and others with an emotional connection to the 1979 crash of American Airlines Flight 191 gathered at a memorial in Des Plaines Saturday to mark the 45th anniversary of the tragic loss of 273 lives.

Siblings Kim Jockl, Melody Smith and Jim Borchers were young adults when they lost their parents Corrinne and Bill Borchers, who were on the first leg of a journey to Hawaii.

Though grief is what they shared with the families of 271 others, it was Jockl’s telling the story in 2010 to sixth-graders at Decatur Classical School in Chicago where she was assistant principal that led to there being a memorial at Lake Park.

Ryan Wangman, a member of that class who’s already begun a career in journalism, said the fact there was no memorial after so much time galvanized him and his fellow students to action. They connected with government leaders and a landscape company to turn a vision into reality.

“We were moved,” Wangman told Saturday’s crowd. “We wanted to do something to right a wrong.”

The students couldn’t have foreseen the impact their actions would have, Wangman said. He now realizes it required kids young enough not to have the sense to take no for an answer to make it happen.

At precisely 3:04 p.m., the audience faced the direction of the runway at nearby O’Hare International Airport to observe 31 seconds of silence — the length of the doomed flight — punctuated by the ringing of a bell.

The names of the passengers, flight crew and the two victims on the ground were then read by those with ties to them or the emergency response.

Among the crowd was William Meskan, wearing the military-style American Red Cross uniform he owned in 1979 when he and his wife were among the representatives of the agency called to the scene from their home in Skokie.

Both regularly responded to disasters, but this one was something different, he said.

“It was the worst event of my life, that’s all I’ll say,” Meskan said. “Normally, the Red Cross deals with survivors, but there were none.”

Instead, the agency’s main task was helping get the victims identified as quickly as possible so their families would have closure, he said.

His wife, a dental hygienist by training, was strongly involved with the dental photographs that made that possible.

Daniel McGinley of Elgin attended the ceremony in memory of his cousin, 22-year-old Eileen Plesa of Mount Prospect, who’d been a secretary for the Pitney-Bowen Leasing Co., at the time.

He recalls he learned of the plane crash on the day it happened, and that his cousin had been on the flight the next day.

“Just heartbreaking!” McGinley said. “It was just so sad. She was such a beautiful, talented young lady.”

As Plesa’s name was read among the other victims, McGinley said, “God bless you, Eileen!”

The Rev. Michael Zaniolo, who serves as chaplain for the Interfaith Airports Chapels of Chicago, said a prayer and blessed the memorial wall by sprinkling earth from the nearby crash site.

“We thank you for the blessing of patience,” he said. “You have turned our sorrow into joy. You have built a community to be able to support each other. We ask you to continue to watch over us.”

Jockl said it’s the hope of every bereaved family member that those aboard Flight 191 have reached an ideal destination after all.

The ceremony ended with a guitar-accompanied vocalist singing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.”