26 years after Flight 800 crash, victims' friends, family still gather

Family and friends gathered at the memorial for the victims of TWA Flight 800 at Smith Point County Park in Shirley on Sunday evening to remember and honor their loved ones, who lost their lives 26 years ago when the aircraft exploded over the South Shore.

"It is the only place I want to be," Margaret Krick of Lake St. Louis, Mo., said. "I have never missed a memorial in 26 years, except two years ago when Long Island was on lockdown because of COVID. I have to be here because it's where my son more or less took his last breath."

Krick's son, Ollie, was a flight engineer aboard the plane. He was one of 212 people and 18 crew members who boarded the Boeing 747 at Kennedy International Airport for an evening flight to Paris.

On this day, twenty-six years ago, the Boeing 747 flying to Paris exploded in midair and broke apart in the Atlantic Ocean about 10 miles off East Moriches. All on board the plane were killed, and the wreckage plummeted into the Atlantic Ocean.

Smith Point is the closest public access point to where the debris field was found.

John Tamburino of Mastic, 49, said he visits the memorial often to pay respects to his neighbor Virginia Pelaez-Holst and her husband Eric Holst.

The couple, who were traveling to a destination wedding, were one of the "best families you could ever meet," Tamburino said.

"It's one of those tragedies that you remember exactly where you were," he said. "I've been here every year, rain or shine, just to pay my respect, not even to those that I knew, but to everybody."

The flight took off at 8:19 p.m., around dusk, in fairly clear weather. Twelve minutes later it blew apart in the sky, about 10 miles south of Long Island. The annual ceremony takes place around the same time the aircraft exploded.

Witnesses in the area, many of whom were outside on a muggy summer night, reported seeing an explosion and, in some cases, a blazing fireball over the Atlantic Ocean as debris showered from the sky.

Over the next year, workers searching for the definitive source of the explosion pulled tons of wreckage from the water, then sorted it in an effort to identify parts of the Boeing plane.

Though they recovered about 95% of the plane, investigators never found a clear answer in the wreckage.

So for months more than 30 workers meticulously rebuilt the plane’s fuselage inside a warehouse on Long Island, a huge reconstruction effort they called “jetosaurus rex.”

It was only after four years and an inquiry that cost about $40 million that the safety board issued a report in 2000 that found no evidence of an attack and instead blamed an electrical failure, which they said had ignited a nearly empty fuel tank.

The report eventually led federal officials to require airlines to pump inert gas into tanks, making them less flammable.

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For those who have a connection to flight, the day serves as a way to pay homage to their loved ones.

Charlie McEneaney, of Freeport, was working for TWA the night the flight went down. He visits the memorial annually to pay respect to his passengers and his colleagues. 

"I'm not as young as I used to be and some day I won't be able to come here, but I hope the tradition continues," McEneaney, 70, said. 

With Jeff Bachner