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9.23.2001 00:16
Children's words help father cope with loss
• The husband of flight attendant Dianne Snyder, who was aboard one of the hijacked jetliners Sept. 11, remembers his wife's loving spirit at a service yesterday.
BY MARK REYNOLDS
Journal Staff Writer
MADISON, Conn.
--
At Dianne Snyder's house in Westport, Mass., it was the night before American Airlines Flight 11.
As the veteran flight attendant did chores around the house, her husband polished her shoes and their 11-year-old daughter, Blakeslee, turned inquisitive.
"What makes human beings different from animals?" the girl asked.
Snyder's husband, John, recalls that his son, Leland, immediately offered an answer, telling his younger sister that the difference is "the ability to reason."
The father has remembered the exchange more than a few times since he first learned that his 42-year-old wife was aboard one of the hijacked jetliners that terrorists deliberately flew into the World Trade Center's twin towers. Yesterday, it became the centerpiece of the eulogy that John Snyder offered to more than 500 people who memorialized his wife at a church in her hometown.
The father said his recollection of his children's Sept. 10 discussion helped him realize that God was not behind what happened to his wife.
"God did not let this happen to Dianne," Snyder said. "It was a bad decision by bad people."
John Snyder also used the Sept. 10 exchange to convey his children's capacity for understanding and reason. He said their strengths provide the best description of his wife, a woman who ran him ragged on the tennis court and liked to time her cookies so they would come out of the oven just as her children were getting home from school.
"Dianne, I love you," he said. "We all love you and we'll never forget you."
The Rev. Louis B. Hays told the mourners it is OK to feel guilty, angry and frustrated about losing Snyder. Her death, at such a young age, and from terrorism, "wasn't supposed to happen," he said.
"Feelings are supposed to happen," Hays said. "Feelings are how we begin to cope with death."
Hays likened the woman to a shepherd, saying she guided her passengers "across the spacious skies."
He said he will forever think of the flight attendant when he hears anyone sing "America the Beautiful."
"Oh beautiful, for spacious skies, for amber waves of grain," he said, quoting a verse from the song. "For purple mountain majesties above the fruited plain.
"America, America," Hays continued, "God shed his grace on thee. And crown thy good with sisterhood from sea to shining sea."
In the Episcopal faith, the liturgy for the dead finds its meaning in the belief that Jesus was resurrected after his death on Good Friday. In essence, it is the same celebration that Episcopalians observe every Easter.
Hays reminded the grieving that God "knows human suffering firsthand."
He also offered an explanation for what happened to Snyder after she boarded an American Airlines jet and took to the air.
"Her Good Friday has come,"
Hays told the throngs gathered at St. Andrew's. "Now Dianne flies with God forever."
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