May 24, 2005
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Michael Nagle for The New York Times
Maritza Crespo leans under the police tape to leave flowers at the site where the small plane crashed onto the beach in Coney Island
JoBeth Marie Gross, 18, left, and Danielle Block, 18, were classmates at Bishop Donahue High School in McMechen, W.Va.
May 23, 2005
In Victims’ Hometown, Sadness at Promising Lives Cut Short
By KIRK SEMPLE
They simply appeared, moved by grief, faith and a deep sense of community.
News of the accident had traveled fast through the northern panhandle of West Virginia: two students from Bishop Donahue High School in the small town of McMechen, and the father of one of them, had died along with the pilot in a plane crash in New York City.
Within a few hours, scores of students, parents and teachers converged spontaneously on the school on Saturday night seeking succor.
In an impromptu hourlong ceremony in the cafeteria, they read Scripture and reminisced about the victims. “We’re very small, so it’s family,” the school’s principal, Brother Rene D. Roy, said yesterday. “It’s literally like losing members of the family.”
The students, JoBeth Marie Gross, 18, and Danielle Block, 18, and Danielle’s father, William Courtney Block, were the only passengers in the small sightseeing plane that crashed on the beach in Coney Island on Saturday afternoon.
The pilot, Endrew Allen, 32, of Jamaica, Queens, also died in the crash.
An official for the National Transportation Safety Board, speaking during a news conference at Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn yesterday afternoon, said that an inquiry into the crash was under way and that investigators expected to produce a preliminary report by the end of the week and a final report in six months to a year.
The official, Todd Gunther, an air safety investigator for the safety board’s Office of Aviation Safety, refused to speculate on why the plane had plunged into the sand, and in response to questions he said that he did not know whether the four-year-old plane, a single-engine Cessna 172S, was flying above the recommended weight or whether its gas tank was full at the time of the crash.
The accident tore a hole in the fabric of the close-knit West Virginia community connected to Bishop Donahue High School, a Roman Catholic school that draws students from around McMechen, a coal-mining town just south of Wheeling between the Ohio River and the Appalachian foothills.
The town, with a population of fewer than 2,000 people, has suffered from the decline in the region’s steel and coal industry. The rusting hulk of the long-abandoned Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel plant squats at its northern edge.
The victims were members of a small group from the area, three students and three parents, who were on a weeklong trip to New York, and the victims had expected the plane ride to be a highlight of their visit.
They were seniors, in a class of 18 and a school of about 80, and were looking forward to graduation tomorrow. Brother Roy said that Danielle Block’s mother has asked that the graduation go forward.
The two young women had originally been accompanied on the plane by another classmate and friend, Melissa McCulley, 18. But after takeoff from Linden Airport in New Jersey, Ms. McCulley got sick, and the plane returned to the landing strip and let her off. Mr. Block took her place.
The crash also involved a chilling coincidence. According to Sister Teresa O’Connor, a teacher at Bishop Donahue, Mr. Block’s brother, Douglas Block, 38, who lives in Brooklyn, watched the plane as it flew over Coney Island and crashed, yet he had no idea his brother and niece were on it.
When contacted at his home in Wheeling, William Block, the Block brothers’ father and the grandfather of Ms. Block, said he was too distraught to speak.
Robert Gross, the father of Ms. Gross, was taken to the hospital on Saturday out of concern that the stress of the tragedy was aggravating his high blood pressure, Sister O’Connor said. Mr. Gross lost his wife to cancer about a decade ago, the teacher said.
At Coney Island, debris from the plane had been cleared by yesterday morning and the sand raked clean. The crash site was encircled by police tape, and a bouquet of flowers and a pink teddy bear marked the spot where the plane had hit the ground.
Andrew Guddahl, 17, of Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, a former student of Mr. Allen’s, was among those who stopped by the site yesterday. He said he had been training with Mr. Allen to get certified for solo flights and had flown with him as recently as Wednesday.
In McMechen, faculty members at the school said Ms. Gross and Ms. Block had been outstanding members of the school community.
Ms. Gross was the only pitcher on the school’s softball team and led her squad to the regional semifinals this year. Ms. Block participated in a Catholic community service organization and was a member of the school’s softball, volleyball and basketball teams. Both women acted in school plays.
Faculty members and friends say the two women had been part of an inseparable quartet that included Ms. McCulley and a fourth friend, Katie Beiter. They became known as the Four Musketeers.
“If you could pick how you want your girls to turn out, I’d say: be like JoBeth and Danielle,” said the school’s softball coach, Jason Hanson, who gathered with others in front of the school yesterday, where two votive candles sat alongside a softball bat and a ball signed by team members.
“The rest of this year is going to be rough,” said Samantha McGlumphy, a member of the softball team, who stood in front of the school with another teammate, Lauren Cook.
“So is next year,” added Ms. Cook.
Reporting for this article was contributed by Ann Farmer, Janon Fisher and Matthew Sweeney, in New York, and Rick Steelhammer, in West Virginia.
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