Services for Kathleen Courtney are: Viewing at St, Augustine Chapel, Sunday Oct 2nd from 6:30pm to 7pm Rosary immed. following. Funeral at St. Patrick's Church, Mon. Oct 3rd at 10am. ... See MoreSee Less
An update on Mrs. Kathleen Courtney. Sadly she passed away late Sunday evening (9/25) surrounded by her family. Please keep her and her family in your prayers. ... See MoreSee Less
DMG's Long-Lost 2nd PSA Crash Story
[never reprinted since it appeared in 1978]
Sad homecoming
'No room for cheers in gym on this day'
By David Matt Green
September 25, 1978
Southern Cross Assistant Editor
Many of the people on the scene at St. Augustine High School after the crash of PSA flight 182 hold happier memories of the gymnasium which became a morgue that day.
We all went to school at Saints, and we all remember the gym for basketball games, pep rallies, Friday Masses, ASB nominating conventions and holiday assemblies.
We all remember smiling and laughing a lot there. None of us did much of either on this particular day.
Dr. Jerry Wisniew, a 1964 Saints graduate, was at his office on the west side of Balboa Park when one of his nurses looked out a window and saw a column of smoke rising in North Park.
Wisniew headed for Saints as soon as he heard it was to serve as a first aid station.
"I came over here because I know the layout and figured I could help," Wisniew said. "When I arrived the gym was a mess. Everything was completely disorganized."
Wisniew said he helped eliminate some of the chaos. "I asked the policeman in charge to tell those not involved to get out," he said. "Then we set about deciding on a plan of action."
Wisniew said he was used to a different kind of chaos in the Saints gymnasium, which is known as "the Pit" because of its smallness and the proximity of the crowd to the basketball court.
"I've been in here many times when this gym was loaded with people," Wisniew said. They were screaming and cheering. There was no room for cheers here today."
Nate Harris graduated from Saints in 1969. An off-duty policeman, he was on his way to Saints for a visit when he heard about the crash on his car radio.
"I hadn't been over here in a long time," Harris said, "so I thought I would stop by and see how the old place was doing."
As soon as he heard what had happened he put aside his plan for a visit and went straight to the crash site. He spent the morning there clearing spectators out of the area and putting bodies in bags.
In the afternoon, when the coroner began moving the bodies to Saints, Harris came along to help.
"This certainly isn't the kind of visit I had in mind," Harris said. "I was in Vietnam for eight months, and this is worse than anything I ever saw over there."
Andres Rios graduated in 1972. He also is a police officer who was off-duty.
"They called us in at about 10 a.m. and we got on a bus and arrived over here at about 11," Rios said. "We've been helping carry bodies into the gym."
Rios mentioned the pep rallies. "This place was always packed with enthusiasm and people yelling and cheering then," he said. "To come in here and see this is quite a change."
Another off-duty policeman called in for the emergency was Dan Stanley, who graduated from Saints in 1971. He too commented on the irony of returning to school under these circumstances.
"It's a hell of a way to come back," Stanley said. "I didn't expect it to be this bad."
Stanley was even more affected than the other returnees. He has relatives in the area.
"My aunt lives about a block from the scene," he said. "I had a hard time getting over there, but I finally got there and found out they were okay."
Bob Ferrier is a general supervisor for the street division of San Diego City. A 1967 Saints graduate, he was sent into the area to assist in traffic control.
"My boss knows I went to Saints," Ferrier said. "I think he sent me over here because he knows I'm very familiar with the area because of that."
When he was a Saints student, Ferrier was in the pep band that played at basketball games.
"Who would have ever thought while we were watching those games that one day people would be carrying bodies in here?" Ferrier said.
Tom Davis is a teacher and coach at Saints, and a 1970 graduate who starred on the basketball team.
In the morning he was at the crash site going from house to house looking for survivors or victims. In the afternoon he was back at Saints helping maintain order as the bodies were carried into the gym.
"The whole thing is just incredible," Davis said. "I hope I never see anything like this again."
Gene Wahl is in his first year as a teacher at Saints. He went to Saints for most of his high school years, although he eventually left and graduated from a public high school.
A few weeks ago he told me that he felt kind of strange just being back at the school again. On this day he was happy to be alive to talk about the events of the morning.
"We were very lucky here," Wahl said. "If that plane had stayed in the air another second or so, Saints wouldn't be here anymore and there would be five or six hundred more bodies."
I graduated from Saints in 1967. I was there in the gym only two weeks ago while working on a story about a teacher at Saints.
On that day the gym held students involved in orientation for the new school year. On this day it held bits and pieces of bodies, and a lot of Saintsmen whose strength may have been developed on the very scene where they now offered their help.
Father Jim Clifford, a teacher at Saints, summed it up best.
"I'm very proud of all the Saintsmen involved here, both current and past," Father Clifford said. "They've done everything possible to help out.
"You couldn't have asked for a more Christian ministry of service." ... See MoreSee Less
DMG's 1978 PSA Crash Story
Plane crash victims
'People on the floor are the lucky ones'
By David Matt Green
September 25, 1978
Southern Cross Assistant Editor
"The people here on the floor are the lucky ones," said Augustinian Father Tom Bonica. "It's their families who are going to feel the pain."
Father Bonica was standing in the gymnasium of St. Augustine High School in San Diego. Three days earlier he had stood in the same building for a pep rally for the school's football team.
On this day, however, the gym was filled not with enthusiastic students, but with the remains of the victims of the crash between a Boeing 727 and a Cessna 172.
The gymnasium was now a morgue.
Earlier in the day, at a little after 9 a.m., Father Bonica had been one of the first people to reach the scene of the crash.
"I heard the explosion and saw the smoke," Father Bonica said. "I gave general absolution from where I was, then got into a car and drove six or seven blocks to the site of the crash.
"The police were already there. At first they weren't going to let me through, then one officer came over and said, 'If I were one of those people, I would want you there with me, Father.'
"The officer got me into the area, and I anointed about 50 bodies," Father Bonica said. "I've never been involved in anything like this before, and I hope I never go through anything like it again. It was gruesome."
Another Augustinian actually saw the mid-air collision.
"I was standing outside talking to the principal and the vice principal," said Father Jim Clifford. "I happened to look up and I saw the jet and a small plane near it. I said, 'They're too close!' just as the jet started to bank slightly.
"Then the small plane hit the wing of the jet and there was an explosion," Father Clifford continued. "The jet's wing burst into flames and the jet turned right toward the school.
"It looked like it was going to hit us, so I started yelling, 'Run! Run!' But it went down about six blocks from here. It was a sight I'll never forget."
Father Clifford went to the crash site with Father Bonica and two other Augustinians, Fathers John Ranallo and Anthony Wasko, the St. Augustine principal.
A number of students also hurried to the area, according to Bill O'Shaunghnessy, a lay teacher at St. Augustine who also went to the site.
"I saw about a dozen of our kids over there," O'Shaunghnessy said. "They were running up into the flames with little garden hoses, showing no regard for their own lives. I had to keep chasing them back to where they would be safe."
When the teachers and students had done as much as they could, they returned to the school, where more than 550 shocked students gathered with the 30 faculty members to offer a mass for the victims.
Then the students were dismissed and police officers, military personnel and medical people from throughout the area began to replace them on the campus, which had been chosen as the site of the police department's command post.
The gymnasium was quickly set up as a first aid station and as a temporary morgue. It soon became obvious, however, that the first aid people would devote most of their efforts to helping police and firemen stricken by the more than 100 degree heat at the scene.
None of the 136 people on the plane had survived the crash.
Most of the people at St. Augustine spent the morning waiting, while at the crash site workers sifted through the wreckage for what remained of the victims.
Nothing could be moved until everything was catalogued as to its location at the site, a necessary step for the investigation which always follows an air-crash.
Early in the afternoon workers from the coroner's department finally began moving the remains, in large yellow or white zippered bags, over to St. Augustine.
As each bag was carried into the gymnasium, either Father Bonica or Father Ranallo went over and stood along side as a doctor opened the bag. Then the priest anointed the remains.
Other priests and lay teachers helped maintain order in the gym, or stood to the side talking to reporters who had begun to arrive at the school from all over the state.
The members of the media were confined to a small area in one corner of the room, fenced off from the main area by a row of tables.
Some of the media people just sat at the tables and stared, dazed out of their professional non-involvement by the colossal feeling of helplessness that filled the gymnasium.
By 5 p.m. more than 100 bags lay in neat rows on the floor, beneath a basketball backboard and about two dozen banners commemorating athletic victories, many of which occured in this very building.
People began to carry the bags out a side door and up into refrigerated trucks, where they would be stored until other arrangements could be made.
But the workers at the crash site were nowhere near finished removing the remains of the victims from the wreckage, and the total number of bags would eventually reach 250.
Thus far the coroner's office has placed the number of deaths at 144, the combined total of victims who were either in the 727 or the Cessna, or were killed on the ground when the jet hit.
That figure could have been much higher, according to Father Bonica.
"There are two schools within a few blocks of where the plane hit," Father Bonica said. "If they had come down over at McKinley grade school or here at St. Augustine, there could easily have been over 600 deaths.
"I can see God's hand in that," Father Bonica said. "I think he kept it away from the schools."
[The photo shows off-duty policeman Nate Harris, Saints '69.] ... See MoreSee Less
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