Five crew members and 127 travelers - students, families, corporate executives, energy experts, colleagues - were returning from seminars and meetings, a funeral, a job.
Lives that were supposed to mingle briefly on USAir Flight 427 now share a tragic footnote in history: Victims of the USA's deadliest crash since 1987.
No one knows what went through their minds those final 23 seconds, from the first sign of trouble to impact, when they surely realized the unthinkable.
But the carnage left amid rolling foothills of Aliquippa, Pa., 6 miles outside Pittsburgh International Airport, belies the full lives, and potential, aboard.
A colorful flag with a parrot flies from the Weaver family's front porch. A tricycle is overturned on the back lawn. Inside the Upper St. Clair, Pa., home, school projects adorn the walls.
The startlingly quiet suburban home no longer echoes from rambunctious shouts of Bryan, Lindsey and Scott - 16, 11 and 7. They and parents, Kathleen and Earl, were returning aboard Flight 427 from the funeral of Kathleen's 9-year-old nephew in Chicago.
The children, who had missed their first day of school, planned to make the second day Friday. Now their tight-knit neighborhood is coping with the void.
Bryan was to be a junior at Upper St. Clair High School, where he played hockey. Lindsey was entering fifth grade and Scott second grade.
Earl, 50, who ran the Pittsburgh Marathon last year, was marketing manager at Harbison-Walker Refractories. Kathleen, 44, worked part-time for British Airways and volunteered as a Girl Scout Leader.
The Chicago-to-Pittsburgh flight is a well-traveled business route, and several area firms lost employees.
Thomas Szcur, 42, of Johnstown, Pa., was thoroughly enjoying his very first round-trip jet experience. He even called his wife, Debbie, from Chicago to tell her what a grand thing flying was.
The father of two worked for Johnstown America Corp., a rail freight car manufacturer.
He and David Milrilovich, 38, a company project engineer from Windber, Pa., were returning from the International Manufacturing Technology Show in Chicago, a metal builders convention.
Milrilovich was married with three young children.
Flags are flying at half-staff at offices of Ampco-Pittsburgh Corp. for chairman and chief executive officer Marshall Berkman, 57. The Pittsburgh man headed the family-owned manufacturing company, whose four subsidiaries have 950 employees and did some $108 million last year in varied business. Berkman was married with three daughters and a granddaughter.
Bright minds had gathered in Chicago at a three-day U.S. Energy Department-sponsored conference to discuss new technologies in an emerging industry: methods to burn clean coal.
Among them was Edwin Wiles, 50, of Pittsburgh, regional vice president of the Center for Energy Economic Development in Pittsburgh and former president of the West Virginia Coal Association. Wiles was on standby and boarded the plane at the last minute.
The Energy Department's Morgantown Energy Technology Center in West Virginia lost four engineers:
William T. Langan, 57, head of the center's power systems technology division, and his wife, Charlotte "Shirley" Langan, lived in Morgantown.
Holmes Webb, 52, of Morgantown was a popcorn addict who kept his office stocked with the snack. Manville Mayfield, 68, of Morgantown came from Tennessee. And Randall Dellefield, 37, of Smithfield, Pa., could whistle almost any song on demand, from show tunes to Christmas carols.
Patrice Leister and husband Joseph Strakey of the Pittsburgh Energy Technology Center couldn't make the over-booked flight 427 and had to wait. But they did run into colleague Tim McIlvried, 32, of Bethel Park, Pa., who was eager to get home. "He was flushed because he had been running. He was so determined to get on that flight," says Leister. "It's a picture that is going to haunt me the rest of my life."
Jack White, 55, of St. Albans, W.Va., caught the earlier Flight 427 Thursday night, hoping he could get home to spend time with family. White began working for Commercial Testing and Engineering in Charleston in 1961, working his way up to vice president.
Laurie Baer, 32, of Ashville, N.Y., was scheduled for a later flight but caught the earlier 427 after a computer seminar in Chicago. The computer programmer for Welch's Inc. in Westfield, N.Y., has a 4-year-old daughter.
A canceled flight put department supervisor Larry Grondin, 41, of Nashua, N.H., and his boss, Nashua Industrial Machine Co. President John Kupchun, 52, of Merrimack, N.H., on the plane.
They had just left a two-day machine tool show in Chicago. Engineer Kupchun was a 36-year veteran of the company.
For Grondin's family, the timing was doubly tragic: It follows the death of his only brother, Yves Grondin, of AIDS.
For Patricia Offley, 46, of New Bedford, Mass., a plant manager at NuTex Industries Inc., the choice was wait for a later flight and be home at 11 p.m. or run to catch Flight 427. The divorced mother of two made the early flight.
OTHER FATALITIES
Other passengers on Flight 427, according to USAir, employers, relatives and the media. The airline withheld one name at the family's request:
CALIFORNIA: David Garber, Westminster; Walter Heiligenberg, 56, Del Mar CONNECTICUT: Edwin Vega, Bridgeport DELAWARE: Chad Morris, Wilmington FLORIDA: Johne Bigelow-Abbott, Orlando ILLINOIS: Ani Ardhaldjian, Chicago; Narod Ardhaldjian, Chicago; Marla Dickerson, 25, DeKalb; Joe Duffy, 28, Chicago; Tom Harger, Chicago; Joan Lahart, Lisle; Ed Mahoney, Countryside; Dan Ruzich, Des Plaines; Susan Schwenkler, Addison; Joel Thompson, Oak Park; Michael Williams, 28, DeKalb IOWA: Greg Morford, 40, West Des Moines MAINE: Anthony Rich and his pregnant wife, Paula, of Cumberland MARYLAND: David Huxford, 54, Oakland MASSACHUSETTS: Patricia Offley, 46, New Bedford NEW YORK: Mary Havlin, New York; Debra Norden, New York; David Wheeler, South Salem OHIO: Todd Johnston, Alliance; Rick Schell, Brunswick PENNSYLVANIA: William Aher, Pittsburgh; Thomas Arrigoni, McMurray; Harry Bernard, Pittsburgh; Lee Blake, McMurray; Ron Brown, Trafford; Ron Cale, Allison Park; Dan Clark, 61, Hollidaysburg; Guy Clegg, 44, Masontown; Lawrence Cole, Amity; John Cooper, Pittsburgh; Michael Cosseboom, Wexford; Timothy Davis, Zelienople. Karen Dickson, Glenwillard; James Eller, New Kensington; Dwight Evans, Tunkhannock; Robert Evans, Venetia; Michael Felger, McKees Rocks; Lisa Ferm, Pittsburgh; Charles Fiantaca, Picture Rocks; Kevin Flaherty, 35, Mars; Richard Garmhausen, Pittsburgh; Jeffrey Gingerrich, Pittsburgh; Leonard Grasso, 41, Monroeville; Gary Hapach, New Brighton; Charles Hardobey, Pittsburgh; Steve Heintz, Mars; Joy Henderson, Pittsburgh. Mel Henry, 36, Dubois; Scott Holden, 55, Pittsburgh; Will Kabbert, Pittsburgh; Daniel Kafcas, Shavertown; Thomas Kinsey, N. Huntington; Bernard Koch, Pittsburgh. Carolyn Kwasnoski, Bethlehem; Daniel Kwasnoski, Bethlehem; Robert Leonhardt, New Castle; Gerald Lindstrom, 60, Pittsburgh; David Ling, Pittsburgh; Kirk Lynn, 26, Greensburg; Bruce Malenke, 46, Uniontown; Robert Marciniak, State College; Timothy McCoy, 27, Orbisonia; Charles McNamara, Sewickley; Paul McSherry, Pittsburgh; William Menarcheck Jr., 43, Uniontown; David Musick, Upper St. Clair. Brian Nichols, Nanticoke; Brian Nugent, 36, Bradford; Jeff O'Keefe, Dowington; William Peters, Canonsburg; Jose Ponce, McCandless Township; Eugene Raykin, Monroeville; Sam Ramasamy, Pittsburgh; Kevin Rimmell, Carnegie; Edward Ryan, Cheswick; Frank Santamaria, 37, Pittsburgh; Alan Sefcik, 43, Washington; Richard Shillinger, Pittsburgh; Steven Shortley, Pittsburgh. Ernest Smathers, Wattsburg; Andrew Solensky, 45, Johnstown; Janet Stamos, 40, Pittsburgh; Jocelyn Taylor, 35, Pittsburgh; Bernie Varisco, Tarentum; Bernard Waters, Pittsburgh; Lee Weaver, Pittsburgh; Donna White, 33, Pittsburgh; Curt Young, Pittsburgh SOUTH DAKOTA
