Vital Portraits Are Sad Coda to Plane Crash

It was just last month that a plane crash was a cause for celebration, as relieved Americans hailed the miracle landing on the Hudson. But now, after Thursday’s fatal crash in a quiet New York hamlet, the portraits of 50 vibrant, varied lives snatched away on a cold, foggy night are surfacing, Ray Rivera writes in the New York Times.

Clarence Center’s school district had two sobering connections to the tragedy: One victim was a 2003 high school graduate, while the wife of another was a secretary for the district. Human rights advocate Alison Des Forges, who chronicled the 1994 Rwandan genocide, loved to serenade school children on her porch. “It is both surreal and somber,” said the superintendent of schools. “There are ties between human beings that you don’t realize until a tragedy like this happens.”
(More Continental Airlines stories.)