Twenty-two years after an unimaginable disaster took the lives of 16 high school students and their five chaperones, its horrors and undiminished memories have resurfaced for the school’s former principal and now Villages resident Dan Chandler.
Today he, like all of us, suffers the heartbreak and sorrow from the mass-shooting at Parkland’s Marjory Stonehman Douglas High School.
His nightmare is not due to a deranged killer, but from the explosion and crash of Trans World Airlines’ Flight 800 over the Atlantic, about 12 minutes after takeoff from New York’s Kennedy International Airport, July 17, 1996. All 230 people on-board perished in America’s third-deadliest aviation accident.
You can read the complete National Transportation Safety Board report on that tragedy: TWA Flight 800 NTSB report
His group, from Montoursville (Pa.) High School, had begun a 10-day trip of-a-lifetime to France.
Chandler all-to-well knows what lies ahead for the students, the faculty, the family and residents of the Broward County neighborhood.
Dealing with two ‘hells’
“There will be two hells that the folks in Florida must deal with,” forecast Chandler. “The first hell will be managing the multiple viewpoints of the horrible deaths. ‘Where will we have the memorial service? Let’s have it in the school. No, it should be in one big place of worship – but which one?’”
The 47-year career veteran in education recalls visiting the town ceremony on Christmas day – five months after the disaster – and walking past the gravestones.
“There were generators running lights on a Christmas tree, stockings on grave stones, and wrapped gifts on the ground. We have to allow these families to grieve in their own way and for as long as they need.”
Soon, the second Hell begins – what Chandler calls the Hell of the Aftermath — that pits raw emotion against rational thought… and the results, he feels, often are catastrophic.
“What to do with the outpouring of gifts that will come from all over the world – from teddy bears and home-made quilts, to sympathy cards with financial donations. Who decides how they will be displayed – and when should the makeshift memorial be taken down?” he asks. “Arguments about that alone were heartbreaking and nightmarish.”
Later, families and friends will demand that their child’s name be called out at graduation and will want a diploma. Others will want to establish scholarships that honor all those slain while other parents will prefer individually-named grants.
“Officials and school board members will make unilateral decisions checking with nobody first. County mental health officials will get ‘bossy’ demanding that teachers and students attend their meetings. Well-meaning, celebrity music groups will offer to perform,” he said.
“Later, lawyers for the families, operating under a theory of Res Ipsa Loquitor, won’t have to prove a thing about negligence because ‘the matter speaks for itself’ as the Latin asserts,” warned Chandler, who had served for five years as principal at the Montoursville high school.
“The school district’s insurance carrier will pay out millions and school individuals will be sued because, quite simply, ‘my kid is supposed to come home from school safe and sound.’ So the district will be liable; school officials will lose their jobs; and many people will never speak to one another again,” he said.
Words of advice
“Parkland’s administrators should not allow mental health experts to take over their school. They may have useful programs, but they aren’t part of their (school) family, and don’t know how a school works,” he cautioned.
One of the best thing at his school was a disaster dog – a black lab named Star.
“She would find a grieving person in the hallways and put her head on a crying person’s lap and wag her tail. The person would quickly smile,” he said.
Chandler, who moved to the Village of Hillsborough, last May, vividly remembers when his students came to him soon after a well-known rock group announced a free concert.
“They said that ‘we don’t want another concert for us, poor, traumatized kids. We want to move on respectfully,’” he said,
The families and friends of the slain need prayers, he said.
“They will never get over this tragedy,” he said.
