ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, August 8, 1996 TAG: 9608080031
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-14 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: LOS ANGELES
SOURCE: JEFF WILSON ASSOCIATED PRESS
AFTER A JET CRASHES, airlines call on California's Sam Douglass to handle funeral arrangements.
As the remains of nearly 50 unidentified victims of the ValuJet crash were laid to rest with a single red rose on each black casket, Sam Douglass had to stand back and admire his work.
``I was very pleased. There are always things that could go wrong, and it went great. The Florida funeral directors did a very good job,'' he said.
For more than 25 years, Douglass has been the mortician airlines reach out to when disaster strikes. Many airlines seek his help to oversee the shipping of remains, the selection of caskets, the embalming and the handling of funeral expenses.
From the 1977 Canary Islands crash that killed 582, to TWA Flight 800's crash in July, Douglass has arrived with the rescuers and investigators to make sure the dead and the loved ones left behind are treated with sensitivity and respect.
The 65-year-old mortician from California was first called on in the early 1970s, when a Pan Am jet crashed at the Los Angeles airport a mile from the Douglass El Segundo mortuary. Three people were killed, and the airline needed someone to make the usual arrangements.
``I handled it very, very low-key and kept it out of the newspaper,'' Douglass said. ``When the time came again, other airlines called Pan Am and said, `Who did you use?'''
So began Douglass Air Disaster Funeral Coordinators. Since that first crash, Douglass has worked on nearly 30 more. In the last three months alone, he has tended to 340 victims and thousands of survivors.
On July 17, Douglass was winding up arrangements from the May 11 ValuJet crash in the Florida Everglades when he got another call.
``It was the TWA accident,'' Douglass said. ``My son and I were soon on a flight for JFK [airport in New York].''
When he arrived, Douglass faced the second-worst air disaster in U.S. history. The Paris-bound flight exploded and crashed in the Atlantic soon after takeoff. There were 230 bodies in the sea.
Douglass and his son, Sean, 26, set up an office at the county medical examiner's office. By Tuesday, 195 bodies had been retrieved.
As victims were identified and released by the coroner, Douglass worked with some 40 New York mortuaries to prepare the remains for shipment to other funeral homes in the victims' hometowns.
He required that the bodies be picked up from the coroner's office by hearse rather than the usual station wagons or vans. He demanded female victims be placed in amethyst-colored caskets, male victims in onyx.
``If the family wants to change caskets, there is no problem,'' Douglass said. ``All reasonable costs are being taken care of by TWA and the company's insurance underwriters, including graves, markers, flowers and other elements of the service.''
But what about unreasonable costs? One family wants a $75,000 burial plot.
``We checked on it. It's not one plot, it's a whole section with four or five plots,'' Douglass said. ``Well, that sort of stretches it, but we'll probably pay for it.''
LENGTH: Medium: 67 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: AP. Funeral director Sam Douglass oversees the shipping,by CNBcasketing and embalming of victims, including those in the ValuJet
and TWA jet crashes.