Cerritos--Two Years After The Crash : Some Still Grieve--but Privately

Denise Guzman plans to drive this morning from her home in Whittierto Holmes Avenue, an upscale residential neighborhood in Cerritos, and lay a wreath of flowers.

She will most likely be alone.

No memorial ceremonies are planned to remember the hellish nose-first crash of a 50-ton Aeromexico jetliner into Holmes near its intersection with Riva Circle two years ago today.

The 11:52 a.m. crash killed all 64 people aboard Aeromexico Flight 498, 14 people in four homes and all three people in a single-engine plane that collided with the jet, which was on approach to Los Angeles International Airport. The crash and the resulting fires obliterated 10 homes.

A year ago, Cerritos, a neatly planned community of 55,000, was still writhing in painful memories, aggravated by intense news media coverage of nearly every near-collision that occurred in the skies of Southern California. On the crash’s first anniversary, local clergymen held a memorial service in a church, and at the site of the crash 50 people held hands in a commemorative circle and placed a wreath on a chain-link fence surrounding one of several vacant lots.

Today, many of the wounds appear to have closed, if not healed completely.

Those hit hardest by the crash--like Guzman, who lost five relatives aboard the Aeromexico jet--will grieve privately. But for many residents who live beyond the crash site, this morning may pass without a memory.

“It seems to be a picture that’s fading a bit,” said Ken Leetsma, pastor of New Life Community Church in Cerritos. One member of Leetsma’s congregation, Jeff McIllwain, lost his mother, Linda, who was in the family home when the plane hit.

“We don’t talk about it much,” Leetsma said. “It’s not there anymore. The community has recovered from it.”

Making the recovery easier is the fact that the neighborhood that was once littered with often unrecognizable pieces of bodies and orange-colored jet plane is nearly restored.

All but one of the 10 destroyed homes have been rebuilt. A year ago at this time, disaster’s imprint remained. There were four vacant lots, one home under construction, two others approaching completion and two finished and occupied. A year ago, several dozen curious sightseers would cruise through the crash site each weekend day. Now there are few.

Beneficial Action

Dr. Patrick O’Connor, head of a county mental health center in Cerritos and the man who led an effort to offer counseling to all of the city’s residents immediately after the crash, believes the early efforts paid off.

Steps such as sending a letter to every family in the city about some of the adjustment problems they might experience encouraged people to avoid holding in their feelings, a common reaction to disasters and one that produces psychological problems in later months and years, O’Connor said.

O’Connor, who said he has not made a study of Cerritos residents, said he believes some emotional problems that many residents might have had a year ago, such as “intrusive thoughts” about the crash or “psychic numbing” of their reactions, have lessened.

Ivan Medina is an example of the change.

A year ago Medina’s thoughts were perpetually gripped by what had happened to him when the big jet fell out of the sky and crashed across the street from his home on Holmes. He constantly replayed the dramatic escape he made through the flaming neighborhood with his wife, their 3-year-old son and a niece. He tortured himself with what-if questions.

Today, said Medina, a 43-year-old car salesman, “the crash is not the problem. That is passed. It’s the insecurity that you live with.

“You think that you might just turn around and not be safe any more. Your kid is riding a bicycle and you just worry to death that something might happen. You run out and call his name. You are a very, very alert parent. My wife is the same way. You become very fragile. Our knees buckle very easily.”

O’Connor, told of Medina’s comments, said they were typical of the healing process.

“Most tragedies that strike us, collective or personal, they cause you to re-evaluate your life. That’s a fairly common experience,” he said.

Last Empty Lot

The Medinas’ weed-strewn, chain-link-fenced property is the only empty lot remaining at the crash site. The family is still living in a rented home in another part of Cerritos, waiting for its contractor to obtain city approval for building plans. If Medina had his way he would buy elsewhere, but he figures that economics demand he rebuild on land he already owns. His insurance paid his mortgage on the destroyed home.

“I know I have to go (back to Holmes) with a different attitude, knowing that what happens happens, and pray for the best,” he said.

The Medinas’ next-door neighbors, Doug and Ann Fuller, a professional couple in their 30s who were on an outing when the plane crashed, were the first occupants of a demolished home to rebuild and move in. They’ve been back for a year.

“Everybody remembers, but I think it’s more of a feeling that life goes on, that this was kind of a freak deal,” Ann Fuller said.

Holmes was not a close-knit block. It was a place where close friendships usually did not extend much further than next door. The Fullers’ other next-door neighbors, Wes and Carmeen Neally, chose to move to another community after narrowly escaping with their lives. A buyer purchased the lot and built a home that is now for sale. The other family with whom the Fullers were close, Maggie and Mike Prendiz, recently moved into their newly built home on the other side of the Neallys’ former property.

“We feel closer because we’ve had this common traumatic thing happen, but we haven’t had a chance to be together much more than before,” Ann Fuller said.

What Denise Guzman feels is much different from what people on Holmes feel. Guzman, a Whittier beauty shop operator, has a physical detachment from the crash but a personal angst that, in contrast to the residents of Cerritos, does not appear to be fading.

Five in Family Die

Guzman’s father-in-law, two uncles and two teen-age cousins were returning from a Mexican vacation aboard Aeromexico 498. Her husband and 13-year-old son were also booked on the trip but did not go. The close-knit family was shattered. Guzman’s immediate reaction was to join and become a leader of an aviation safety group that sprouted in Cerritos days after the crash. She eventually left that group to pursue a more focused vision: She would create a bereavement center that would counsel and support people who had lost family and friends in airplane crashes.

A year ago she was talking with determined enthusiasm about leasing an office or persuading a hospital to provide office space. She had, in the year since the crash, talked to more than 100 people who had lost loved ones in the Aeromexico crash and other crashes.

Today Guzman admits, with slight bitterness, that her dream probably won’t come true. The public’s interest in aviation safety and its compassion for crash victims did not burn long enough, she believes.

“I think it’s pitiful that the only time they think about it is at the anniversary of the crash. They don’t even want to worry about it any more. They don’t realize it could fall on their house,” Guzman said. “All the TV stations used to broadcast every near-miss. Then after the first anniversary that was it.”

Guzman’s gut instincts are true. By the time the National Transportation Safety Board reported in January that U.S. airlines in 1987 had the highest number of accidents in 13 years and the most deaths in five years, the issue was no longer front-page news. In the first year after the crash, The Times published nearly 30 stories on various near-collisions between planes and nearly 20 other articles on aviation safety issues. In the second year after the crash, only seven stories on near-collisions were printed and only three others on safety appeared.

“I told my husband I can’t do this by myself,” Guzman said.

Guzman is now focusing her attention on a Nov. 1 trial in federal court in Los Angeles where more than 50 lawsuits arising from the crash, including her family’s, have been consolidated into one case. A woman from Bakersfield whose parents both died in the crash will stay at Guzman’s home so she can watch the trial, Guzman said.

More than anyone else in her family, Guzman is haunted by a desire that the victims of the crash not be forgotten. It irks her that Cerritos has not placed a monument at the crash site similar to one erected in adjacent Norwalk to commemorate a 1958 crash between a military transport plane and a patrol bomber over that city that killed 47.

“Fine,” Guzman said defiantly as she talked about her plan to place flowers at the Cerritos crash site. “I’m going to put a wreath there because there are body parts there. If they want to throw me in jail, I’ll be there at 10 o’clock in the morning. That’s where they died. That’s where they’re buried.”