Episode 83: Aviation Disaster Family Assistance Act – 30 Years of Impact, Part 2

00;00;09;03 – 00;01;39;14
Jenn Stansberry Miller
Welcome back to OnTopic with Empathia. I’m Jen Stansberry Miller, Director of Crisis Solutions at Empathia. Today we continue our conversation with Sharon Bryson and Kathryn Turman about 30 years of victim services and family assistance. In part one, we explored how families helped shape the NTSB and FBI programs, the challenges of changing institutional practices, and the lessons learned from responding to other major events. Now we’ll turn to some of the most sensitive responsibilities in this work, and what meaningful support looks like long after the initial response ends. So I think we can collectively agree that we’re all here based on things that went wrong. Right? That’s why we’re here. And our goal and objective is families is we wanted it better for next time. Right, right. And everything you just shared. What I’m curious about from both is what’s the importance of the history and lessons learned in situations like this, especially as folks retire or leave the industry? How do we preserve and protect that collective experience and knowledge to pay it forward?

00;01;39;16 – 00;04;39;09
Kathryn Turman
Well, I think the cost of not doing it is probably going to be greater than the cost of doing it. As Sharon talked about, you lose a lot of credibility, a lot of trust if you don’t do it. And it also costs more money to try to restart programs or relearn things. What I’ve seen and thinking about this a lot with the 25th anniversary of nine over 11, we get kind of complacent. But bad things will happen again. They will happen again. And I was in a position to watch Al-Qaeda go from truck bombs in front of U.S. embassies to bombs on a boat hitting the USS Cole, to the idea of we talked about why not fly an airplane into a building so bad things are going to happen, and you need to be prepared, at least at some level, and people need to understand it. Sharon was saying the why behind it. Because what I always used to tell agents and executives is that this is a case to you may be a big case, but you’ll go on to the next one. And these people are going to live with this for the rest of their lives. This is more than a case to them. So we need to get it right or as much as we can. And when we get it wrong, we need to apologize and set it straight. That’s part of being transparent. Agencies are going to screw up. They always are, because they’re made up of people. There are things that go wrong, but the most important thing is getting out in front of it and admitting it and saying what you’re going to do to fix it. And I think most people, victims and families will recognize that people are imperfect and they make mistakes. But do you own them? And do you try to make them right where you can? So, like I said, I’ve just the cost of not doing things, and I’m old enough to realize that. Is it the philosopher George Santayana, who said, those who will not remember the past or doom forever to repeat it? And I think that really is the story of mankind. We see it over and over again, and I think we see it with these types of, events and the impact on families. So, I even maybe it’s important to when I retired from the FBI, I spent the first two years before I retired writing white papers, basically writing papers on just about everything we did and why. What was the history, you know, why did we do it this way? And then I don’t know if they threw them out or not, but at least I took the time to do it, because I didn’t want the lessons that we had to learn in a hard way. For them to have to, you know, try to mess up like we did and reinvent the wheel or the flat tire. So it it is important to have that institutional history or at least the respect for, you know, what went before and what people will do, how they will do it in the future, maybe a little bit different technologies, different populations are different, but the principles are still the same and the need to do these things are still the same.

00;04;39;12 – 00;05;24;00
Jenn Stansberry Miller
Let’s focus on a d=couple areas in the assurances, and definitely a few main advocacy points. Let’s talk about remains and personal effects for a moment. And what if families taught you about the identification and return of remains in the handling of personal belongings? You know what, care and concern do industries and businesses need to consider their and when the belongings are also evidence, how do you navigate that for families and also survivors, and get the collective understanding of why they cannot have an item back?

00;05;24;03 – 00;09;54;24
Kathryn Turman
Well, I think the human remains issue is is one. Janet Reno, when she was attorney general, used to say, she said that sometimes victim assistance is just putting yourself in that person’s place and doing, you know, for them, which you would want others to do for you. Very simple. And I think when it comes to remains, can be very complicated, particularly when there’s fragmentation of remains. 9/11, you see the I mean, there’s still dealing with identification of remains there. So I think it’s very important to be very honest with families upfront. Let them know the process, let them know how long it might take. And then start to document their wishes so that when the time comes for the remains to be returned, you know, you know where they’re going to go and how they want it handled. We used to deal with that more from overseas when we had victims of terrorism, or hostage taking overseas and explaining a very complicated process of, no, you don’t have to figure out how to get your loved one back. We will take care of that for you. And they will go to Dover, where there will be an autopsy. And then we will work with you in your funeral home to get them back to you as respectfully and sensitively as possible. The same with, with personal effects. They they really do. And people feel differently about them. And I always used to tell people, don’t assume that something that is of high value is more important than something that’s really seems very mundane. We dealt with a lot of mass casualties, mass shootings, and often families and even survivors would want certain things back right away. You know, things they need wallet, key keys, house keys, car keys, things like that. So we work with our folks and then the people who are processing crime scenes to try to get those things back to people as soon as possible if they weren’t needed. But otherwise, to ask people, what is it that you’re looking for? What? You know, we want to make sure that we get the things that they’re looking for, if possible, and return them to them and as clean and sensitively as as possible. We used to take jewelry, for instance, and make sure that it was clean, and then we would we purchase little velvet boxes, jewelry boxes, so that we would return a wedding ring or a necklace or a watch to a family member, not in an evidence bag with a number on it, but in something that they could keep. And, the other thing, when you talk about the things that are evidence, there federal statutes, that govern how investigative agencies supposed to handle evidence and particularly personal effects that are evidence. So they need to be documented and returned as soon as possible. If they’re not, if they’re not needed as evidence or for forensic testing, if they are needed for evidence, then the survivor, the family needs to be informed that those items are being kept and why, and then they should be maintained in as good in condition as possible and returned when they’re no longer needed as evidence. I had a fight with the prosecutor one time over returning a bicycle that had been stolen from a kid. This is my work for the U.S. Attorney’s office. And I said, why do you need the bicycle? Take a picture of the bicycle. Give the bike back to the kid because he needs it for his paper about. So, sometimes there’s some practicality involved and just working through those issues a little bit. But the P things that Sharon will speak to it as well. Very important to most people. And it’s and it’s, it can be very complicated. Las Vegas, there were over 10,000 black flip flops that were recovered from the scene. There were thousands of lawn chairs. We set up a huge personal effects area near the family Assistance Center. We had it divided into sectors so people could try to, you know, the things that they left behind. But at some point, we had to have discussions with survivors and families and the local authorities to decide what we could do with the 10,000 black flip flops, which was under legal guidance. They were in value. So we made arrangements with the local police to have those destroyed and the lawn chairs as well. Things like that. But where you had a, you know, a stroller with, you know, important things in it or a backpack, we worked really hard to find those things, get them associated cleaned and returned.

00;09;54;27 – 00;24;12;21
Sharon Bryson
You know, you have to…. I guess I feel like you almost have to have worked in the in the mass fatality world to understand the value of personal effects. There also are people that don’t want anything back, but they want to know that it was destroyed. There have been instances where we’ve said, no, I just don’t think I can couple of little Lion King lunch boxes that I recall, in particular the young ladies that were killed. The little girls had packed their lunch that day with their mom and their little Lion King. Lunch boxes were in the personal effects. They we clearly knew who they belonged to. And they stopped there for a very long time. And till finally the dad who survived said, you know, I, I just can’t, you know, I, I want to, but I don’t, you know, is that something that you could just make sure, doesn’t get into the wrong hands or doesn’t get, you know, that somebody else doesn’t get it, but I, I just can’t I just can’t was, you know, was pretty much. But that was after 2 or 3 years. It wasn’t a very it wasn’t a quick response. And so just knowing that sometimes people just can’t and in other times it could be, you know, it could be a paperback book or, you know, just something you don’t you don’t know what they’re going to assign value. In, in one particular crash, in a water recovery, a young lady had just been married, and the, she and her new husband were killed, and the mother had come. We had done cataloging and all kinds of other things, and we were sort of really down to the the unassociated, almost unidentifiable. But there were still personal effects left, and we decided to just lay them out and people were able to come and if they wanted, if there was something there that they believe might belong to their loved one, we were allowing them to take it without. I mean, obviously these weren’t things that had great value. And, in there was, magazines and books. This is back when magazines were on airlines. So it’s a little bit ago. I’m old, so it’s a little bit ago. And so there was this big box full of paper and stuff that had gotten wet, that was recovered and just, you know, everything was taken. And she said, I, I have to keep looking. I know that there’s this bracelet, and each of the siblings, the mother and aunts had contributed a stone. And this bracelet was made from those stones. And she said, I know she she I know she had it. I haven’t seen it anywhere else in the personal effects. I’ve looked and looked. And so I said, you were welcome to look anywhere you want. So she starts pouring through this box and I hear this, this noise like I’ve never heard before in my life. And I thought, oh my goodness, you know, I, I violated my own rule, which was, don’t ever let them look before you’ve looked right. And, said, no idea. And I went back and she was holding the paperback book that, she knew her daughter had been reading and had her with her on the airplane. She happened to find it. And so she’s like, oh, I want this. And then as she took it, the bracelet dropped out of the book. Her daughter had taken it off and used it as a, like a place marker. We’ve all done. We put odd things in our books, write to mark our page. And, you know, that was years, years later. And I kept thinking, you know, we should just get rid of that paper. You know, that, like, you know, we don’t need to go through that. What possibly could be in there, right. And then on that day, I thought I learned a very valuable lesson about don’t ever assume there isn’t something valuable somewhere. Let people look through, let people come through. Let them get, you know, to a space where they feel comfortable that they’re never going to be able to to, to get that back. And so, it that was a very, emotional day, but a very rewarding day and created quite a lesson for those of us that were, you know, present when she I mean, this book just looked terrible with all moldy and, nasty. And as she picked it up, it went flying out of the book. And so, you just don’t know what what will be there or what will, will have value for people. And that may be the only that may be the only comfort someone ever gets. Is that one trinket, whatever it happens to be, something that you can hold on to. And so that becomes really important to people and all of my breathing of information and doing all these other things and supplying this and supplying that will never account for the value of being able to find that one thing that sort of by the grace of God, didn’t get pitched out right in a pile of wet papers. So, you know, you just never know. And, and the family members should always be in the driver’s seat on that. They don’t want things back. No judgment. Right. They may want something back that I’m sort of like, you know, a doll baby that, a child was holding, when there was a fire on an aircraft. And you can see where you could see where the child’s hand was because the baby was burned all the all around where the little girl’s hand was. They wanted that back. I could hardly look at it. Yeah. But it was something that they wanted back. So all of those things become, you know, you support them, you give them the opportunity, you give them the space, and hope that there’s something that brings them. I’ll use the term comfort. I don’t know if it’s always comfort, but certainly connection, I think is really important. And, that for me was a really, really valuable lesson. It’s not just about stuff, right? There’s just way more to it than that. And so I know that, you know, Jen, we’re probably going to talk a little bit about site visits and that kind of thing. I, I want to, you know, I will say that I also learned a lot about site visits. I didn’t understand completely. It’s sort of like my head. Understood. But my heart couldn’t figure it out. About the site visit part. And so in escorting to site visits, many times, if I was on scene, the team would tell you that nobody goes to the site, and till Sharon has been there and looked at everything and drew and I absolutely crazy, about the way it was set up, the approach that families would take to the observation location, building in space, giving families choices. They ride the bus out. They don’t necessarily have to get off the bus. If they get off the bus, they don’t have to approach the site. They can go as close or as far away. I mean, all of that is about them being able to do, you know, making sure you’ve got it to where nobody is going to be startled, to the point that maybe not a funny story, but a little bit. In Kirksville, Missouri, we did a site visit, and in Kirksville there was a row of trees, and on the other side was an Amish farm and old Amish farm. And I grew up on a dairy farm. I, I don’t know, I know Catherine is, been around those kind of things as well, but I was out there getting ready for the site visit, and this cow let out and fell her like I have never heard before in my life. Now, you couldn’t see the cow because it was on the other side of the trees, but you’re standing there at the site and all of a sudden there is this god awful noise. And so the one thing that I said to the team, look, when we’re prepping the family members to come out here, we need to let them know that there’s a farm, an active farm over there, and they could hear all kinds of noises, you know, who knows, right? Because you don’t want them to be startled, right? They’re already anxious at that level. You don’t want them to be startled by anything that might just abruptly, you know, come into that particular space. People. Asked questions in family briefings, very detailed questions and family briefings prior to a site visit. Then there was a site visit, and then the questions from the family members were very different. It wasn’t how soon can I get my loved one back? In some cases, some cases it was, am I going to get my loved one back? Okay. And so the ability to see that the transparency and the understanding of what that provides them, it creates so much understanding for a family member who doesn’t have the ability to really comprehend. We were in the business, so we sort of knew post-crash fire. Everybody kind of knew what that meant, right? Family members don’t understand that. They didn’t even understand what parts were. Did that come off the airplane in some cases? Right. They don’t understand that. So they’re desperately wanting to try and understand and get a perspective. And so a site visit would drastically change the content. And the tempo and the, the feeling, within a family briefing. I will also say that now I’ll be quiet because Catherine has things to say about this to. You should never, ever do a memorial service first and then a site visit. You should always do a site visit and then a memorial service, because if you do the memorial service and people begin to move towards their new normal. And I won’t say a level of comfort, but perhaps greater peace with the situation. And then you take them out to the site visit, you’re just ripping things open. And so we were forced into doing them in the in the wrong order memorial service and then a site visit because of a particular political operative. I’ll just use that term. And when I saw what that did to the families, I swore that I would never, as long as I was taking a breath, if I had any responsibility for something like that, I would never, ever again allow that to happen. I would cancel, I would cancel the memorial service if or one I’d cancel one of them, because what I witnessed that day was absolutely wrong. People were torn apart in that process unnecessarily. And so those things I think are really important. So they occur on a continuum for family members. There’s a continuum or a pathway for family members, and each of those steps helps them begin to walk towards whatever their new normal is. It’s personal facts. It’s the return of their loved one, it’s site visit, it’s memorial. It’s that transparency, caring and support. And then which, you know, again, Catherine’s group I thought was always very good at it is the follow on. We’re not leaving you or we’re leaving the site. We’re leaving the immediacy of it, but we’re still going to be there with you, even if it’s 5 or 6 years later or the Lockerbie, you know, the trials and things like that. So I think all of those pieces from an agency response become really, really important. And if you screw up any one of them, the next one’s going to be really challenging. And so doing them in a cooperative, thoughtful manner, well-planned, with the idea that family members are in the driver’s seat, will lead to what I would consider to be a successful response. But the family members have to be in the driver’s seat. You don’t take them to a site. If they don’t request a site visit, you don’t make everybody go right. So, all of those things I think are become really, really important. But, that planning of the site visit, because those are tough. They’re tough site visits. And then into the memorial service, whatever that however that’s going to look contextually, I think are both really important. I’ll stop. I could talk all day!

00;24;12;23 – 00;25;48;28
Kathryn Turman
No, and Sharon, you’ve really, I think, hit everything really well. I think from what I’ve seen is that families will imagine what happened. Sometimes going to the site, if they want to, can be part of, making it real, but also becoming part of that picture of what happened. I saw, you know, particularly I mean, even during the pandemic and trial, we had families that had never been to Lockerbie that wanted to go on their way back from the Netherlands. So we set up trips for them to go to Lockerbie and to go to the exact place where their loved one body had been found. And some people don’t need that. Other people do. But even many years later, if they didn’t do that, they they may still have persistent questions. Or like I said, people imagine what happened and sometimes it’s better if they have the real the real picture. But I agree that the site visits are really hard, but very important for the people who want to be there. They need a lot of support while they’re there and immediately afterwards. And I think the memorial service, kind of helps mark a transition as people start to return home. I think it can mark the beginning of that next phase of loss, but it also helps return the focus from the event and the investigation back to the people that they’ve lost. So, I think that’s a good way to try to, move, move forward.

00;25;49;01 – 00;27;20;05
Sharon Bryson
No, that’s a really good point. You know, the the NTSB team often gets asked about attending memorials. And many times the team and I would always leave it up to them, but many times they would decline. Our feeling was that our presence, no matter what kind of clothing we were wearing, it didn’t matter. Our presence there drew the attention to the investigation, and the purpose of the memorial was to honor the person that was lost. And no matter what you do, if you’re. You mean it’s been public enough at that point? They know who we are. And I always felt like we were kind of short changing the victim a little bit, or the victims a little bit. By drawing attention to the investigation and away from the life. The life they lived. Because that’s, to me. What what that’s really about. It’s not that we don’t care. It’s really about wanting to keep the focus on that particular person and not draw it back to what was going on with the investigation. I’ve given that advice to some senior people at NTSB who didn’t necessarily agree with me. But the team itself always tried to not interfere with that process. We made sure it happened and they had everything they needed, and sometimes we might stand outside. But a lot of times we would prefer to not draw attention to the investigator process.

00;27;20;07 – 00;28;37;08
Kathryn Turman
I think it’s also important to to just recognize that the enduring nature of some of these memorials, this December 21st, will be the 38th anniversary of Pan Am 103. Every single year on December 21st, there’s a memorial at Arlington Cemetery at the Cairn Memorial Cairn. It’s always attended by families and by former investigators and and people who worked with the families and then current people. And it’s, I went for so many years and I watched as old folks, parents of the kids grew old and disappeared and watched his little children who were running around and among the tombstones during the service, grew up to be adults and parents and to take over the leadership of the family groups. The same memorial happens in Lockerbie. So to me, it’s it’s sort of, I don’t know what it it’s just it’s compelling the fact that, you know, 38 years later, these memorials are still going on. So it speaks something to the importance, that people still place many people. Not everybody feels the same way on on what happened to their loved ones and remembering the people who were lost in reading their names.

00;28;37;11 – 00;28;41;04
Sharon Bryson
So you went to that with Director Mueller a few times? Yeah.

00;28;41;05 – 00;29;03;26
Kathryn Turman
Many times! Yeah. Yeah, many, many times. He, he would go and often spoke, he was involved with that case from the beginning and then, kept it going while I was at the FBI. I mean, 38 years and there’s a there’s going to be a trial next year of the the suspected bomb maker. So you just never know how long these things are going to last.

00;29;04;03 – 00;29;04;21
Sharon Bryson
Right.

00;29;04;25 – 00;30;04;19
Jenn Stansberry Miller
And I think you bring up a very good point, because a lot of our focus is always on the response and that, you know, there’s a beginning and end. Right. But for us, families and survivors, it’s lifelong. So we have yearly services. You- pick a crash. Yeah. You know it’s still continues. And what I have found over the years were over 30 years for us is that it’s generational. And like you were saying, seeing, you know, I was young, but there were people younger in our family group. They’re grown now. They’re married, they have kids, their kids are at the site. And just seeing that continue is definitely something I never thought of at the time. My own children as well. It’s just fascinating. Yeah, it is truly a generational impact for all of us. It’s extraordinary.

00;30;04;22 – 00;31;55;20
Sharon Bryson
You know Jen, it’s- it’s interesting. One of the, one of the hardest things. Well, there there are many hard things along the way. But one of the hardest things for me is I entered every family center, whichever, you know, one we were responding to, when I walked into the family center and I looked in the faces of the people that were there, I, without any exception, my thought was, you know, your your life has just changed forever. You might not know it because at that point in the first few days, families are fighting to get back to normal. Right. We’re going to get we’re going to get back home and everything’s going to be like it was. And the the painful part for me was your life was going to change forever. And I knew it already. But you, you didn’t as a family member. Right. And to watch that struggle as families come to the realization, hopefully in a hopefully in a productive way, that, oh yeah, you know, this that’s going to be every year for the rest of my life. This is my life now. But for a lot of people, they didn’t they didn’t realize it. They were fighting and desperately wanting things to return to normal and to get things back to normal. And for the team who had had that experience over and over again, you know, we all knew that wasn’t going to be the case for you. And so the hope was to help you get to a good place. But we knew it wasn’t going to look anything like how it looked when you when you left home to come to the site or before the crash occurred.

00;31;55;23 – 00;31;56;17
Jenn Stansberry Miller
Yeah.

00;31;56;19 – 00;32;42;15
Kathryn Turman
So so I said that one of the most important things I learned from working with Pan Am, one of three families, was how enduring grief is, and that, you know, people don’t ever return to life the way it was, but they spend the rest of their lives adjusting to the world as it has become, right with that loss. And it doesn’t mean that things can’t be good. And I’ve seen people create amazing legacies, collectively and individually for for people who’ve been lost in these tragedies. But it is different. And it is I very quickly throughout the book, I read about Kubler-Ross, about the five stages of grief, because they don’t apply. They just don’t. They don’t apply.

00;32;42;17 – 00;32;43;18
Sharon Bryson
Not particularly.

00;32;43;18 – 00;32;52;07
Kathryn Turman
With this, you know, roller coaster ride maybe, or something else. But it’s, yeah, for everybody. It’s different, but it isn’t. It is enduring.

00;32;52;10 – 00;32;56;02
Sharon Bryson
Yeah, it’s a great theory, but not even close. Yeah.

00;32;56;02 – 00;33;08;01
Jenn Stansberry Miller
Yeah, there’s a good theory coming out of, I believe, Arizona. It’s the pinball method. And I’m like, yes, yes, absolutely. I with that right.

00;33;08;02 – 00;33;08;28
Sharon Bryson
I can see that.

00;33;09;04 – 00;33;10;24
Jenn Stansberry Miller
It’s how it is.

00;33;10;27 – 00;33;16;23
Sharon Bryson
Yeah. Back and forth. Up and down. Yeah. Good days. Bad days.

00;33;16;25 – 00;33;46;27
Kathryn Turman
Yeah. But it is interesting to sit or talk with somebody who lost a child 30 years ago or whatever and, and see how they still sort of quiver when they’re touched. There’s still that, that place there that will always, always be there. And yeah, I think that’s one of the things that I had to learn to respect and have encouraged agents and other people I’ve worked with and trained to really recognize that, and sometimes it’s just putting themselves in the place of that person who’s lost somebody.

00;33;46;29 – 00;33;47;22
Sharon Bryson
Yeah.

00;33;47;25 – 00;34;00;12
Jenn Stansberry Miller
Well, at 30 years, what do leaders need to know? What does America need to know? What do we all need to know from your experiences to move forward?

00;34;00;14 – 00;36;35;28
Sharon Bryson
You know, the way the way that we demonstrate transparency, the way that we, interact, the technology that we’ve used, all of that, is going to change. It has changed. You know, Katherine and I were doing this today, you know, virtual capabilities and all the other technology and communication things that exist, which, quite frankly, I’m not sure have made life easier. I’ll just say that. Right. Are going to change and be different, but the human experience is the same. And, being able to meet that, I don’t think there’s any, any greater compliment that I’ve ever been given than by a family member who said to me one time, you don’t know it, but just your presence next to me gave me a tiny little bit of comfort that I needed at that moment in time. And sometimes it’s not words. You don’t have to say anything. You know, we knew that when you. We knew that when you walked into a family briefing, you were going to tell us what you knew that was your promise, and you demonstrated that over and over again. And so, you know, just being able. I mean, it really is a privilege to be able to be present with people who are struggling to figure out how life is going to be for them from that point forward. And I hope that people recognize that it’s a privilege. It’s not a job. It’s not a checklist. It’s not, you know, it’s not any of those things. Each and every response for me was very different, and it was very different based on the families that were impacted. But the one constant was that they were willing to allow us into their world at that moment in time. To be helpful to them, in a way that they never envisioned that they would need. And so I think for me, that’s the big part about carrying it forward. Learn the lessons, learn the lessons, be creative with, you know, the new technologies and the things that are out there. But don’t ever forget the human experience, because that’s really that’s really the why, right? It’s really the why for all of it.

00;36;36;00 – 00;36;38;23
Jenn Stansberry Miller
Katherine, any parting thoughts?

00;36;38;25 – 00;37;56;23
Kathryn Turman
No, I was just thinking about about what Sharon said, and, what a privilege it is and a response, a really awesome responsibility to sit with somebody who’s going through something like this. And, I will never forget one of the hardest things I ever did in my job was to sit with the families of United Flight 93 as they heard the cockpit voice recorder, which was a big decision that Director Mueller made. It was the right decision in that situation. But to sit with them while they heard the last 30 minutes, basically of their loved ones lives and, what an such an awesome, responsibility to be there with them and to to recognize the impact on them of that and also to be able to make it possible for them, because I think many of them walked away knowing more than most of the other families might ever know about how their loved ones died. So, you know, that’s something I’ll never forget. And it took pushing the envelope a little bit to do that. I mean, Sharon, remember, I mean, we had I.

00;37;56;23 – 00;38;02;09
Sharon Bryson
Wasn’t I wasn’t sure my access card to the building was going to work anymore after that.

00;38;02;11 – 00;39;19;10
Kathryn Turman
Well, we we didn’t we didn’t put the decision on the NTSB. We just let you know what we were doing. But, Director Mueller got some very angry, responses from people in the industry. And and so I understood their concern, particularly the airline. I really understood it. But this was a very unique situation, and we did it in a way that was highly secure. And families didn’t go out and talk about it afterwards. Not in specifics. They were they they respected that. But but just being able to sometimes put aside the prescription, the plan that we all have in certain circumstances and do what’s needed, what’s going to help those families the most. And, and doing that with the Cedar and some other things we did was, was really it was the right thing to do. Difficult thing to do. More difficult for them than for us. But, but I think that’s one thing to kind of remember that you can have a plan. It’s important to to have things in place. If Sharon, say, the technologies, the techniques may be different, but to still have them in place and to ultimately recognize that this is probably the most important part of the aftermath of a disaster or a mass casualty crime.

00;39;19;12 – 00;39;29;27
Jenn Stansberry Miller
Well, thank you both. We’ll leave it there for now. It has been an honor for sure to spend time with you and to hear how it all started.

00;39;30;00 – 00;39;31;26
Kathryn Turman
Tripping down memory lane!

00;39;31;29 – 00;40;30;17
Jenn Stansberry Miller
Yes. Sharon and Catherine, thank you for sharing your experiences for the years you’ve devoted to families and survivors. Your work help establish practices that continue to guide responses. Today, as we mark 30 years of the Aviation Disaster Family Assistance Act. We also recognize the families and survivors who push for change so others would receive better care and support for leaders listening, I hope these conversations prompt you to consider how prepared your organization is, and whether your people have the training and resources to meet family, and survivor needs to learn how Empathia can help you with family assistance, planning, training, and response, visit www.Empathia.com. I’m Jenn Stansberry Miller. Thank you for listening.