Text size:

Touched by tragedy

When Flight 800 went down off the Moriches, 230 souls became part of the community

BY LAUREN TERRAZZANO | Newsday Staff Writer

If disaster had a scrapbook, it would be a tiny bayside community 70 miles east of New York City. Here, a decade after Flight 800 rained fire and debris into the Atlantic off the South Shore of Long Island, American flags still flutter lazily on people's front lawns in Moriches, and a granite memorial sits at the entrance to Mt. Pleasant Cemetery.

It commemorates the 230 people who died in the explosion of the Paris-bound flight. On that summer night of July 17, 1996, East Moriches became a place forever changed, even as it has retained some of its sleepy, small-town identity.

On the night the shattered Boeing 747 fell into the sea, Moriches became the launching point for a rescue effort that sorrowfully turned to recovery. Boaters became part of the massive volunteer task force, the East Moriches firehouse was transformed into an emergency command center and housewives and Girl Scouts turned into fundraisers to memorialize those who died.

They planted tiny seedlings and small plants that struggled to survive on a once-barren plot of land. Now, the memorial garden to TWA Flight 800 victims is a colorful expanse of lilac bushes, rhododendrons, dogwood and spruce.

"This community has been forever transformed," said Judy Savino, a dentist from nearby Center Moriches who was there on the night of July 17 and days after, in the makeshift morgue at the Coast Guard station by Great South Bay, attempting to identify the bodies through dental work.

Recently, she was at the Moriches Bay Memorial Garden with her nieces and nephews, enjoying the 80-degree weather and an enormous garden and monument centered on a children's playground. "It's very sad, but the kids love this park."

The garden was dedicated to the victims nine years ago, the collaborative effort of Moriches area residents and the Town of Brookhaven. To fund the project, the organizers sold bricks that now line the walkway. Each brick tells a story, with the name of someone who died. Benches and trees also are similarly dedicated.

Like many in the town who remember, Savino recalls exactly where she was when the plane went down -- at the movies in Patchogue with her cousin, she said. When she returned, state troopers and fire trucks had blocked off the roads, making it impossible for them to get to their houses. Ambulances rushed to the scene to help the injured. But the injured never came.

Downtown East Moriches, if you can call it that, with its one stoplight, also has changed. As development has trickled east over the years, families have moved into developments of vinyl-sided Victorian-style houses that stand beside original Victorians from the 1800s.

East Moriches Hardware still exists, on the corner of Main Street, but the local seafood restaurant across the street has transformed itself into a sushi place. The Moriches Bay Deli, which provided sandwiches and coffee to many a rescue worker, has moved 700 feet west down Montauk Highway, across from a bank. And a boutique called Primp has moved in where an old baseball card store once resided.

There are signs of progress in other areas, such as the brand-new elementary school off Montauk Highway that was built a few years ago to accommodate the swell of young families moving to the area. Many have only vague memories of what happened to Flight 800.

Maria Hayes, who was playing at the Moriches Bay Memorial Garden with her three children, didn't live in East Moriches at the time of the crash. A California native whose husband is a pilot for American Airlines, she moved here four years ago, before the birth of their first daughter, Grace.

The community of 5,000, she said, is a friendly place with a neighborly feel. "The people in the post office know you; my husband knows the hardware store people," she said.

Adriane McCoy, the landscape designer responsible for the upkeep of the memorial park, said it has remained a big part of East Moriches life. "What has been neat is that it's still very much a community thing," said McCoy. Each year, she enlists the help of local Girl Scouts and residents of the Independent Group Home Living Organization to help weed and care for the property. "Since we started the park, it has gotten so much more use."

She also spends her time planting annuals each year so that various colors bloom through the seasons. There's alyssum, a delicate fragrant white flower that lines the walkways. There are sunflowers, and anything else she can find that is colorful from local nurseries.

Still, others can't believe a decade has gone by. "It's been a long time, hasn't it. Ten years already?" said Dawn Wesche, whose Center Moriches funeral home helped at the crash site with the makeshift morgue. "It's become a part of this town. It shaped and defined it."

Still, she said, "It was a terrible way to put us on the map, but we shouldn't forget what happened. It would be dishonoring the lives lost."

The park itself is a testament to how things have changed and how things have remained the same.

A Kousa dogwood tree planted in honor of TWA flight engineer Oliver Krick by his loved ones -- just a tiny seedling 10 years ago -- has sprouted into a 14-foot behemoth, offering delicate white flowers each year.

One young flight attendant, Jill Ziemkewicz of New Jersey, is remembered each year by a blue spruce her family planted in her memory. Around the anniversary of the crash, her family comes to Long Island to tack a picture of her onto the tree and leave a bouquet of sunflowers, her favorite bloom. This tree, too, is now about 14 feet tall, McCoy said.

And like the disaster they seek to honor, the trees still cast long shadows in the afternoon sun.