THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, April 7, 1996 TAG: 9604070065
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: FROM WIRE REPORTS
DATELINE: DOVER, DEL. LENGTH: Long : 118 lines
On a chill military airfield, on a day as gray as the mood of mourning, President Clinton on Saturday honored Commerce Secretary Ron Brown and the 32 Americans who perished with him when their plane slammed into a Croatian hillside Wednesday, calling them ``the best of America.''
Clinton, his hand over his heart, stood with the grieving families early Saturday evening and watched as the 33 coffins, each wrapped in an American flag, were carried from a C-17 military transport plane at Dover Air Force Base and placed into two lines of waiting hearses.
``The 33 fine Americans we meet today on their last journey home ended their lives on a hard mountain a long way from home, but in a way they never left America,'' Clinton said. ``On their mission of peace and hope they carried with them America's spirit, what our greatest martyr, Abraham Lincoln, called the last best hope of Earth.''
The president invoked the patriotism of the dead. ``They believed,'' he said, ``that America through their efforts could help to restore a broken land, help to heal a people of their hatreds, help to bring a better tomorrow through honest work and shared enterprise.''
For half an hour before Clinton spoke, the military pallbearers worked, bringing out from the C-17 the bodies of Brown; government employees; the aircraft crew; corporate executives and a New York Times reporter.
Among the dead was James M. Lewek, 44, a 20-year CIA veteran who lived in the Great Bridge section of Chesapeake with his wife and two young children.
As a military band played ``Stars and Stripes Forever'' and the national anthem, the dead were honored with a 19-gun salute.
Clinton hailed each group - the ``brave'' members of the military, the ``outstanding business leaders,'' the ``brilliant correspondent'' and the ``public servants, some of them still in the fresh springtime of their years, who gave nothing less than everything they had because they believed in the nobility of public service.''
Clinton noted that the son of New York Times correspondent Nathaniel Nash, who died in the crash, had worn his Cub Scout uniform to the ceremony because the boy wanted to show his two younger siblings that he was strong. ``He sat right up front,'' Clinton said, ``but it was too much for him'' and the child eventually began to cry as the ceremony wore on.
Clinton told reporters that he had not gotten much sleep since learning of the crash last Wednesday morning. Hillary Rodham Clinton, wearing black, appeared dazed and tired Saturday.
Clinton's voice broke when he spoke of Brown, 54, who as chairman of the Democratic National Committee had played a critical role in Clinton's election in 1992.
``There was a noble secretary of commerce,'' Clinton said, ``who never saw a mountain he couldn't climb or a river he couldn't build a bridge across.''
The muted families, wearing red, white, and blue ribbons, and the extended family of Cabinet officers and White House officials who had counted so many of the victims as colleagues and friends, sheltered in a hangar that opened onto the Tarmac. Some mourners cradled babies. One man raised a child onto his shoulders.
Clinton arrived at the base at midday. He emerged from Air Force One clasping the hand of Alma Brown, the widow of the commerce secretary. Behind them came Vice President Al Gore side by side with Doris Meissner, the commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, whose husband, Charles F. Meissner, was killed in the crash.
They proceeded to Building 704, normally used by the Air Force for logistics, where for nearly two hours the president, the vice president, and Hillary Rodham Clinton met privately with the families of the victims, each family placed in a separate room along a long hallway so they could grieve in private.
The administration has been mourning since Wednesday, when word first came that Brown's plane, carrying a high-powered group of government and business officials exploring the possibility of bringing postwar reconstruction projects to the devastated former Yugoslavia, was missing in the Balkans.
The wreckage was found along a rocky hill less than two miles from the Dubrovnik airport. Officials said the T-43A aircraft had made its approach to the airport off course, buffeted by a furious storm and guided by the antiquated radio beacon system used at the airport.
The audience on Saturday was made up of family members, but it was also a Who's Who of Washington's power elite, of Brown's fellow Cabinet members and senior White House officials, so many of whom had had close ties to him. Rep. Bobby Scott, D-3rd, whose district includes parts of the Peninsula, Norfolk and Portsmouth, was among the dignitaries.
The bodies were to be kept at the Air Force base for what is expected to be several days as final identification is made by military forensic specialists.
Sometime this week, after the bodies are released, Brown will lie in repose at the Commerce Department and be memorialized at the Metropolitan Baptist Church, in Washington. The funeral is to be held at the National Cathedral, where the president will deliver the eulogy for the man he called his ``dear friend.''
Brown, who had once served as a captain in the Army, is to be buried at Arlington Ceremony with full military honors.
In Dubrovnik earlier in the day, after the coffins were loaded aboard the plane that transported them home, Croatian President Franjo Tudjman said in a eulogy, ``You will remain forever in our memory.'' His country, he said, was ``shaken by pain and sorrow.'' MEMO: This story was compiled from reports by The New York Times, The
Associated Press and Cox News Service.
ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Military pallbearers worked for half an hour before President
Clinton spoke at a ceremony at Dover Air Force Base on Saturday for
the 33 Americans killed in last week's plane crash in Croatia.
Photo
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Relatives, Cabinet officers and White House officials were among
those grieving Saturday for the 33 Americans, including Commerce
Secretary Ron Brown, killed last week on a flight to Croatia.
KEYWORDS: ACCIDENT PLANE ACCIDENT MILITARY CROATIA
FATALITIES MEMORIAL by CNB