NATION NOW

Mourners remember 49 who died in 2006 Comair crash

Morgan Watkins
The (Louisville, Ky.) Courier-Journal
Homing pigeons are released during the memorial service for the 10th anniversary of Comair flight 5191 crash in Lexington on Saturday.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Matthew Snoddy remembers flying in the dark with his father as a teenager.

Tim Snoddy had set his son up with flying lessons as a gift. Even at night, with his son at the controls, Matthew said his father was relaxed. He trusted him.

Tim was one of the 49 people who died 10 years ago when Comair Flight 5191 crashed during takeoff at Lexington's Blue Grass Airport in the early-morning hours of Aug. 27, 2006. Matthew was one of several people who spoke Saturday during a memorial service at the University of Kentucky campus, where a crowd gathered to remember the lives that were lost that day.

On the morning of the accident, Flight 5191 was headed for Atlanta. But the pilots mistakenly used a runway that was too short for the jet, and the plane crashed in a nearby field, killing all 47 passengers.

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"The flight was a cross-section of the best and brightest," not just of Lexington but of the world, Matthew Snoddy said Saturday. He also took a moment to remember the flight's three-person crew, including co-pilot James Polehinke, who was handling the jet when it crashed and was the accident's sole survivor.

Snoddy talked about the support people have given to his family and to the other families whose loved ones died in the accident over the past decade.

"The city of Lexington truly is a small town when tragedy strikes," he said.

The people who spoke at the memorial —which was held beneath a large tent at UK's Arboretum, where the family and friends of those who were lost sat together in rows of white chairs — emphasized the way the local community pulled together after the deadly crash.

"We are here in sorrow to begin a new decade of living with our loss," said Mayor Jim Gray, who spoke of Lexington's enduring community spirit and the small kindnesses residents showed each other in the days after the accident.

Everyone in Lexington remembers where they were 10 years ago when they heard the news, U.S. Rep. Andy Barr said. He was in church. Every passenger had a story, a family, a life, he said.

Deborah Hersman, who used to work for the National Transportation Safety Board and led that agency's investigation into the crash, noted that many changes have been made since the accident that made aviation in the U.S. safer.

As her flight approached Blue Grass Airport on Friday, she looked out the window in search of the crash site, but so much has changed in the last decade, she said. Runway 26 — the one the Comair jet used that morning — doesn't even exist anymore.

"It seemed the entire community was in pain," she said of the accident's aftermath. "Lexington reminded me —and I think the entire commonwealth — that we are all part of a larger family."

Anita Threet lost her husband, Greg Threet, in the crash. Today, their son is in college and their oldest daughter, who has her father's eyes, is a sophomore in high school, Threet told the crowd Saturday. Their youngest daughter, who was just seven weeks old when her father died, still hears stories about him.

Over the past 10 years, she has been asked many times how her family overcame their grief and moved forward.

"It's simple: We did not do it alone," she said.

As the memorial drew to a close Saturday morning, everyone gathered at a remembrance sculpture featuring 49 silver, glinting birds, welded together and spiraling skyward.

A line of white birds — released symbolically as part of the memorial — flew past the sculpture, zipping over the heads of the many people gathered there to remember the departed.