1960

     There's a certain age we all reach at which we begin recognizing events beyond our own child's sphere of influence. Things that happen not in our own home, or in those of our neighbors. Not on our block, or the next one over.

     And such it was with this young boy in New York City on this day in 1960.

     Today's 50th anniversary of the Park Slope Air Disaster has received lots of coverage in the NY Media and on the networks as well. You can watch the CBS Report here.

     I lived about a dozen miles away from the place where 134 people on the planes and on the ground died in a huge fiery disaster. At first there was one survivor...a little boy almost exactly my age...who survived for a day, and then died from the smoke he had inhaled as he crawled out of the wreckage.

      Perhaps it was that boy's presence that made the incident one of the first big news events I remember. The photos of him and his family have the same feel as my own snapshots from that era.

     I had a scrapbook in which I pasted newspaper clippings about the crash, so it must have made an impression on me. That scrapbook may still be in a box somewhere around here.

     It's interesting how our reaction to disaster has changed since then. Today they dedicated a memorial marker to those who were killed 50 years ago. If the same event were to happen tomorrow, the marker would be in design phase within weeks. We've institutionalized grief, I think, and laid out a series of expected events. The candlelight service. The trip to the site by relatives of the victims. The memorials. And perhaps that's helpful to the people who are suffering from loss. A road map that may lead to resolution and peace.