Relatives gather at airports

Press, 21 July 1989, Page 6

Relatives gather at airports

NZPA-AP Denver News that a nine-year-old boy had survived the DC-10 crash at Sioux City, lowa, broke the pall surrounding United Airline’s posh red carpet room at Stapleton International airport. The doomed jet had taken off from Stapleton about 12.45 p.m. bound for Chicago’s O’Hare International airport and Philadelphia International airport. “Isn’t it great.. We are taking the first plane out (to Sioux City). He’s alive. He made it,” an overjoyed Rabbi Avrohom Brownstein told reporters as he and his wife burst out of the V.I.P. room where relatives of passengers on the plane had gathered.

Rabbi Brownstein, the director of Beth Jacob High School in Denver,' and his wife, Chava, had just received word their son, Yisroel, nicknamed “Sroli,” had survived the crash and was in a Sioux City Hospital with a broken arm and minor burns. “He’s okay. He always wanted to have a broken arm anyway. We just talked to him on the phone and he’s okay,” Rabbi Brownstein said. He said his son had been going to Philadelphia to visit friends. Mrs Brownstein said she heard the first reports of the crash on her car radio. “Things started filtering in. First the plane was from Denver, then going to Chicago. I thought to

1 myself, ‘Oh, no!’ and I had to pull • over. I waited for someone to come and get me,” she said. Earlier, United employees escorted 25 to 30 visibly shaken relatives past ranks of reporters and television cameras. The news media was not allowed into the V.I.P. area. In Philadelphia, four people with first-hand knowledge of the pain of losing loved ones rushed to the airport as soon as they heard about the crash. “The purpose of our visit is to comfort the families, to support those people who wonder if their family members are alive,” said Mr Stan Maslowski of Haddonfield, New Jersey.