Dependability Proved a Tragic Trait

Virginia Robinson, known to her friends as “Ginger,” cut short her visit with relatives in Michigan and left her husband and children behind so she would be on time for work in Garden Grove on Monday morning.

That last-minute change in flight plans placed Robinson, a Fountain Valley resident, aboard the jetliner that crashed moments after takeoff Sunday night from Detroit’s Metropolitan Airport.

“She was very dependable. That was part of the problem,” said her pastor, the Rev. Ken Wyneken of Faith Lutheran Church in Huntington Beach. “If she’d stayed on the flight she was on, she’d have shown up to work late, so she switched and was on the one that crashed.”

She was one of three travelers who died after originally being scheduled to fly Sunday from Detroit to Orange County aboard Continental Airlines flight 657, with a stopover in Houston. But after a “mechanical problem” was detected, the Continental flight was delayed, Continental spokesman Rick Scott said in Houston. He said Continental passengers were offered re-booking aboard Northwest Airlines Flight 255.

Robinson, 45, Joanne Surowitz, 18, of West Bloomfield, Mich., and Rhett Bushong, 19, Mission Viejo, accepted the change in flight plans and boarded the Northwest plane.

Surowitz, a recent high school graduate, was traveling to join her parents in their new home in Tustin, while Bushong was returning from a family reunion in Toledo for the opening of football practice at Saddleback College in Mission Viejo. He had graduated from Mission Viejo High School in June, 1986, and was to be a linebacker on Saddleback’s team.

Although most of the Surowitz family had moved to Tustin in the past year, when Joanne’s father had started a new job, Joanne and a younger brother had stayed behind to finish school in the Michigan township, said Jill Beckerman, a secretary at West Bloomfield High School, where Joanne graduated in June.

“She was very pretty and seemed to be popular with the kids,” Beckerman said. Surowitz had planned to attend Michigan State University in the fall.

Northwest Airlines hasn’t released a passenger list, but it was learned previously that Hidi Ratliff, 16, of Santa Ana and Raphael Tombasco Jr., 34, and his wife, Lisa Tombasco, 26, both of Laguna Hills, died in the crash.

About 10 passengers aboard the flight, which was scheduled to stop in Phoenix, were believed to have been headed for John Wayne Airport in Orange County.

Ginger Robinson’s husband, Bill, son, Scott, 16, and daughter, Theresa, 11, remained in Michigan.

“We were really afraid they were all going to be on that plane, but the others had stayed behind,” said Ginger Robinson’s employer, Dr. L. Frank Kellogg of Garden Grove, recalling news of the crash.

“They were all vacationing back in Michigan, but Virginia had to get back to work,” Kellogg said Wednesday.

“When she didn’t show up for work as she always does, we were afraid. She always comes in early. . . . When she wasn’t on time that really was suspicious.”

Robinson, who was a registered nurse, was the “nurse-receptionist” for the pediatric office, Kellogg said.

“She was very good at (handling) calls that came in and giving advice,” he said. “She’s been a valued person.”

“She’s just an awfully nice person, well liked by everybody,” Kellogg said. “We’ll really miss her. She was very warm and very capable.”

Friends, Neighbors Shocked

Word of Robinson’s death also shocked neighbors and her friends at the Faith Lutheran Church in Fountain Valley, where she was superintendent of Sunday School and her husband is chairman of the church board of directors.

Wyneken said Wednesday that Bill Robinson “was just recently laid off his job as an engineer” after working for the firm for 19 years.

“This is a second big shock he’s had to take in the last two months,” Wyneken said. “That’s really been the big kick.

“He is, I think, OK,” Wyneken said. “He does have family where he is. He has places where he can be.”

Officials in Michigan this week are going through the time-consuming process of identifying the bodies of the crash victims. Not until then can the bodies be released to families for funerals.

“He’s able to speak with me (by telephone from Michigan), but I think that’s because he can make the phone call when he’s able to handle it,” Wyneken said. “He said the time goes so slowly, because there’s nothing to do but wait.”

Wyneken said the whole Robinson family is active in his church.

“She (Ginger Robinson) sung in the choir, she’s been on our youth committee,” he said. “Anything that involved children, she’s been involved in.”

He described her as a “quite outgoing, caring, kind person.”

Drove to Meet Flight

“She had lots of friends, lots of good friends,” Wyneken said. “She did jobs that had to be done, and she very seldom complained.

A neighbor, Bonnie Monary, said she was unaware that Robinson had switched flights. Monary drove to John Wayne Airport Sunday night to meet the Continental flight but became alarmed when Robinson was not aboard.

Continental told her that flight had been delayed, so Monary returned home to await a telephone call from Ginger Robinson.

“But she didn’t call, and we got quite concerned,” Monary said.

Monday morning, both Monary and her husband, Chuck, began telephoning for information and eventually learned that their neighbor had transferred onto the Northwest flight that crashed.

Monary said her husband telephoned Bill Robinson in Michigan to break the news. Robinson knew of the plane that crashed but had no idea his wife was aboard, she said.

“He asked Bill if he had heard from Ginger. Bill said, ‘I haven’t heard from her; she’s in California,’ ” Monary recalled.

“He told Bill she didn’t get on the plane last night; she might be on the plane that crashed. Bill said, ‘That’s not possible.’ My husband told him to call the airline.

‘Just Devastated by It’

“I know it’s a cliche, but what else can you say? They’re still in a state of shock. They’re not willing to accept it. . . . My husband is just devasted by it. We were all very close.”

Monary said Robinson was the sort who used her spare time to help others. “I used to tease her: ‘What night do you not have a meeting this week so we can get together?’ She was very deeply involved with church, volunteer work at school, the Boy Scouts. Her hand was the first one up.

“I don’t want to sound gushy, but she was the kind of person you could always count on. There was never any question about it. The kind of person who should live forever.”