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Mom, daughter escape after plane crashes into home

Hours after a plane slammed into her home Karen Wielinski gave an exclusive interview to Buffalo radio station WBEN. This is her account based on that interview.

(CNN) — Hours after a plane slammed into her home Karen Wielinski gave an exclusive interview to Buffalo radio station WBEN. This is her account based on that interview. Karen Wielinski was watching TV in her home when she heard a plane making an usually loud noise. “I thought to myself, if that’s a plane, it’s going to hit something,” she said. Then, Continental Airlines Flight 3407 crashed into the Clarence Center, New York, home, trapping her and her family. “And next thing I knew the ceiling was on me,” she said. Just before the crash, Wielinski was sitting in the family room watching TV, her 22-year-old daughter Jill was watching TV in the front of the home and her husband Doug had just left the family room to work in the dining room, she said. The Bombardier Dash 8 Q400, a 74-seat turboprop, was en route from Newark, New Jersey, to Buffalo Niagara International Airport when it went down around 10:20 p.m. ET Thursday. Watch a witness describe what she heard » All 49 people aboard the plane — 44 passengers, four crew members and an off-duty pilot — were killed. Karen and Jill Wielinski escaped and were taken to the hospital with minor injuries, but Doug Wielinski was killed. Read more about the victims At first, Karen Wielinski said, she thought the crash wasn’t real.

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“When the ceiling first fell down … I think the first thing I said to myself was ‘Is this real Is this reality or am I dreaming something’ But then it became all too real. “I just didn’t think I was going to get out of there,” she said. “I thought ‘This is it,’ and kind of panic set in,” she said. “I just, I didn’t know how much was on top of me, so I was panicking a little but trying to stay cool.” That’s when Wielinski noticed a glimmer of light to her right. “I don’t know if you gain strength when you have to but whatever was on top of me I just pushed off, at least part of it so that I could get out of that hole,” she said.

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“I shouted first in case anybody was out there,” she said. “And then kind of pushed what was on me, part of that off and crawled out the hole.” When she got out of the hole she heard a woman crying and saw the back of her home was destroyed. “The fire had started,” she said. “I could see the wing of the plane.” After surveying the disaster she saw her daughter was safe, but hysterically crying. “From what she’s saying it appeared the attic kind of came down onto where she was,” Wielinski said. “She couldn’t get through the windows because of the fire that was there, but she miraculously found an opening and slid out of that.” Immediately after the mother and daughter escaped, Wielinski said her daughter asked where her father was. “And I didn’t know,” Wielinski said. “I just told her we had to get out of there, we had to get away from the fire, because when I knew it was a plane, I knew that there might be explosions or something.” So both women ran to the back of the yard and up the street to look for their neighbors. When she was asked early on if she had heard news about her husband, Wielinski said no, and she didn’t know whom to ask. “But to me it looked like the plane just came down on the middle of the house, and unfortunately that’s where Doug was,” she said. The women were taken to the hospital with only minor injuries. Wielinski said her arm was in a sling because she fractured her collarbone. She said her daughter escaped with only scratches on her feet. Wielinski grew emotional talking about her husband. “Oh gosh,” she said, beginning to cry. “He was just a good person.”

CNN exclusive: Secret files reveal NIU killer’s past

Steven Kazmierczak admired the sadistic killer in the
A former student who killed five people at Northern Illinois University last Valentine’s Day had been drummed out of the Army for hiding his psychiatric history and expressed admiration for famous murderers, CNN has learned.

Steven Kazmierczak was known as “strange Steve” to roommates, studied the Virginia Tech and Columbine massacres and idolized the sadistic killer in the “Saw” horror films, according to documents from the year-long investigation into the NIU killings. The still-unreleased police file on the shootings, which also left 18 students wounded, shows that 27-year-old Kazmierczak had been hospitalized several times as a teenager for psychiatric issues and had a history of suicide attempts. Kazmierczak shot and killed himself at the end of his shooting rampage. Police told CNN that they received no information that would have tipped them off to his rampage. But David Vann, who has written a book about what led to the shootings, said his research shows that Kazmierczak carefully planned the shootings and that there was a lifetime of red flags that indicated he was capable of such an act. Watch shooter’s eerie fascination with sadistic horror flick » “The degree of self-destruction and antisocial behavior at the end, of really scary behaviors, was just phenomenal,” Vann said. “And at some point after you look at all of those records, you just have to wonder, what does a mass murderer have to do to get noticed” The NIU Police Department has repeatedly refused CNN’s requests to release any files related to the investigation, since it is still under way. But CNN was given exclusive access to some of the approximately 1,500 pages of police reports, psychiatric records and family documents by Vann, who said he obtained the files from a law enforcement source. See one of Kazmierczak’s psychiatric reports » “It’s just amazing that he could coldly plan to kill all of those people. … Everything was planned out carefully,” Vann said.

Kazmierczak, a former NIU student, was going to graduate school at the University of Illinois in Champaign at the time of the killings. During his time at NIU, he wrote a paper called “No Crazies With Guns,” in which he used the April 2007 massacre at Virginia Tech to analyze whether mentally ill people should have access to guns. Kazmierczak was later able to purchase weapons used in the NIU killings because he had not been in a mental facility in the past five years, which would have disqualified him in Illinois from buying a gun. After the shooting, NIU Police Chief Donald Grady said there were no “red flags” in Kazmierczak’s past that would have foreshadowed what happened. He told CNN this week that he stands by that statement. “Was he obsessed Was he not obsessed That information didn’t come through to the university police at any time he was here. … How could it be a red flag if it never came to us” He added, “It’s the same story. Nothing has changed in that regard. We haven’t found anything that would dispel any of that. So it is absolutely the same right now.” Grady said the investigation was ongoing but not a priority because there was no one involved but Kazmierczak. SIU blog: Could you spot a killer “We already know he is no longer with us,” he said. “We already know what he was wearing and what he used and how he went about doing it. I’m not certain that there’s much else there.” Asked about information in the police files indicating that Kazmierczak exhibited odd behavior at NIU, Grady said that was never reported to the police department — and insisted that there were no outward warning signs. “There are lots of people on this campus that someone would refer to as strange,” he said. “I mean, we have women that walk around with dog collars. I consider that to be strange. I don’t know what someone else would consider that to be, but walking around with a dog collar strapped to your neck seems to me to be strange. Is that a sign that we should now be concerned that this person is about to engage in acts of violence Well, I don’t think so.”

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As far back as childhood, Kazmierczak’s mother wrote in a family book that her son was overly sensitive and bullied. “Sometimes I wish he would be a little tougher, and bop the daylights out of people that pick on him. … One day he will,” she wrote. In high school, Kazmierczak made a bomb out of Drano, according to the documents. He also had a history of attempted suicides and was hospitalized nine times for psychiatric issues before 2001. He spent three years at Thresholds, a psychiatric center in Chicago, according to psychiatric records in the files. He was kicked out of the program for “non-compliance and deception,” the records state, adding that Kazmierczak “has had multiple hospitalizations and … impulsive behavior and suicidal gestures.” He enlisted in the Army in September 2001 but was discharged the following February for lying on his application about his mental illness, Army records state. After that, he enrolled at NIU, where his freshman suitemates recall him as being obsessed with infamous figures such as Adolf Hitler and Ted Bundy. “He was called ‘strange Steve’ by everyone in the dorm, and everyone knew that something was wrong with him,” Vann said. But he also was a successful graduate student at NIU who tutored other students. “Steve Kazmierczak was living a double life,” Vann said. After Kazmierczak transferred to the University of Illinois graduate program in social work, he began seeing a therapist. Over the next several months, he was on and off an antidepressant and sleeping medication. In October 2007, according to the records, he and his former live-in girlfriend, Jessica Baty, saw the horror film “Saw IV.” Kazmierczak then dressed up as Jigsaw, the movie’s sadistic killer narrator, for Halloween and had a tattoo of the character — depicted riding a bicycle through a puddle of blood — on his forearm. “I think of all the texts he left, movies and books, the ‘Saw’ movies are very important,” said Vann, who wrote an article about Kazmierczak for Esquire magazine in 2008. In the films, Jigsaw puts his victims through torturous tests to see whether they value life enough to live. “He’s trying to teach his victims the value of their lives through torturing them and making them face possible death, and he has these creepy sayings like ‘See what I see, feel what I feel,’ and it’s almost like it’s supposed to be therapy through empathy,” Vann said. By February 2008, records show, Kazmierczak began buying ammunition and guns. In an e-mail to a friend, he joked about a recent shooting at a Chicago Lane Bryant store in which the victims were shot execution-style. “His e-mails with his friends start mentioning planning world domination and talking about mass murder,” Vann said. Jessica Baty told CNN in an exclusive interview three days after the shootings that Kazmierczak had stopped taking an antidepression medication for obsessive-compulsive disorder and anxiety three weeks before the shooting. Watch Baty in the up-close interview » “He stopped taking it because he said that it felt, made, it made him feel like a zombie and that he just, you know, was lazy and that’s why he stopped taking it,” Baty said. Baty, who said she spoke with Kazmierczak on the eve of the shooting, later received gifts in the mail, including an engagement ring. She declined CNN’s requests for another interview. In the police reports, Baty says she knew that Kazmierczak had sex with women he met on the online classified site Craigslist in the months before the shooting. She also said he once told her, “If anything happens to me, don’t tell anyone about me.” She told police that she “did not know what to believe about Steven anymore.” And Grady said he doesn’t want to give Kazmierczak any more attention.

“This one individual came in and certainly caused trauma to this institution,” he said. “Am I angry about that Absolutely, I am. “Do I ever want to see that happen again No. Not ever, not here, not anywhere else, and I really don’t want to glamorize what it is that an individual such as that has done and give him more credit and credibility than he deserves.”

‘Fireproof’ is still generating heat

Kirk Cameron stars in
You don’t find many churches making theatrical films. You especially don’t find many churches making films starring Kirk Cameron about a firefighter in a crumbling marriage addicted to online porn.

But that’s the case for Sherwood Baptist Church in Albany, Georgia. In fact, the film, “Fireproof,” was the church’s third movie. It was also an unexpected hit. In September it debuted at No. 4 at the box office, eventually bringing in $33.5 million and spawning two books: a novelization, also called “Fireproof,” which is in The New York Times’ best-seller list’s Top 20; and a companion journal to the movie, “The Love Dare,” which has sold more than 2 million copies. Last week “Fireproof” debuted on DVD and climbed to No. 3 on Billboard’s DVD chart, beating out “The Hulk” and “Saw V,” among others. “You don’t often see movies made by churches do big numbers,” said Billboard’s Anthony Colombo. “Having [distributor] Sony behind it helps. Having Kirk Cameron helps, but for it to come out and do 136,000 pieces [DVDs] in its first week is pretty impressive.” “It should not be working,” said Alex Kendrick, one of the pastors behind the film. “All I can say is we prayed for months and asked for it to honor God.” Kendrick said that Sherwood’s pastors gathered for prayer two years ago and asked God to give them an idea for their next movie. They were just coming off making “Facing the Giants,” a movie shot entirely in Albany on a $100,000 budget. It starred no professional actors — just members of their church — but made $10.2 million at the box office and sold 250,000 copies on DVD, launching the church into the national spotlight. The church leaders lit upon the idea of troubled relationships. “Families and marriages are crumbing and we want to do something about it,” said Kendrick, recalling the idea’s genesis. “God give us the idea. We had no clue what would happen with it.” “Fireproof” began with a $500,000 budget and a fresh crop of church member/actors, but the film got a left-field boost when Cameron, best known as the 1980s heartthrob from the TV series “Growing Pains,” read the script and asked to get involved. “All throughout the movie … there are issues of communications, money, sex, addiction, porn, extramarital affairs, feeling respected at work but not at home, feeling respected by friends but not at home,” Cameron told CNN. The themes resonated with the actor and devout Christian, a husband of 17 years, and father of six, he said. That and the “cool action scenes,” he added. The makers of “Fireproof” tapped into the church market, arranging screenings for the National Baptist Pastors’ convention before release and using word-of-mouth among church leaders. However, says Cameron, the film was pitched to general audiences, not necessarily Christians. “‘Fireproof’ was never marketed as a Christian movie. This is a movie about marriage,” Cameron said. “The fact is, though, the gospel is presented, is done well, and it’s a central part of the storyline.” Although many critics panned “Fireproof” — “as sincere, uncynical and subtlety-free as a Sunday school lecture,” said Variety — audiences embraced it. “There’s a huge market out there that’s underserved. That market is there and a lot of people don’t want to go there but there is a huge untapped market,” Cameron said. Paul Dergarabedian, a box office analyst for Hollywood.com, said he was shocked when the movie debuted in the top five its opening weekend. “With ‘Fireproof,’ they really cracked the code with the major success with the film and have this appeal across the board,” he said. “They didn’t follow traditional marketing methods but they didn’t need them for this film. … Maybe that’s why it worked out so well.” He added, “You’re talking about a very successful property. … The powers that be that put this together are really on to something.” Churches are using “Love Dare” and its companion curriculum as a teaching tool, says publisher B&H Publishing’s Andrea Dennis, who calls “Fireproof” “a marriage movement.” For Valentine’s Day more than 9,000 churches are scheduled to show the film, many displaying the admonition “Fireproof Your Marriage” on their signs. B&H believes “Love Dare” could hang around on the best-seller list — where it’s already been for 19 weeks — along the lines of Rick Warren’s “The Purpose Driven Life.” And the filmmakers have kept their success close to home. Alex Kendrick said the church used the profits from the movie to buy 82 acres of land and build a recreation center for the town, equipped with eight tennis courts, eight basketball courts and an equestrian area. A baseball diamond is on the way. He’s confident “Fireproof” will remain a successful brand. “When something grows the only reason it happens is people say it worked and you should try it,” Kendrick said. “When it works and there’s a legitimate impact, people want to be a part of it.”

A Brief History of Friday the 13th

Face it, you’re screwed. Today is Friday the 13th — the unluckiest day on the calendar — so try not to crash your car, fall down a flight of stairs, set yourself on fire, or do anything else that might compromise your well-being. And for God’s sake, stay away from men in hockey masks.

The number 13 has been unlucky for centuries. Some historians peg the superstition to the thirteen people who attended the Last Supper , but ancient Babylon’s Code of Hammurabi omits the number 13 in its list of laws, so the superstition dates back to at least 1700 BC. Thirteen is so unlucky, in fact, that in 1881 an organization called The Thirteen Club attempted to improve the number’s bad reputation. At the first meeting, the members walked under ladders to enter a room covered with spilled salt. The club lasted for many years and grew to over 400 members, including five U.S. presidents: Chester Arthur, Grover Cleveland, Benjamin Harrison, William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt. Despite the club’s efforts, triskaidekaphobia flourished; even today, most tall buildings don’t have a 13th floor.

The number’s association with Friday, however, didn’t take hold until the 20th century. In 1907, eccentric Boston stockbroker Thomas Lawson published a book called Friday the Thirteenth, which told of an evil businessman’s attempt to crash the stock market on the unluckiest day of the month. Thanks to an extensive ad campaign, the book sold well: nearly 28,000 copies within the first week. In 1916, the book was turned into a feature-length silent film.

Wall Street’s superstitions about Friday the 13th continued through 1925, when the New York Times noted that people “would no more buy or sell a share of stock today than they would walk under a ladder or kick a black cat out of their path.” Some stock traders also blamed Black Monday — Oct. 19, 1987 — on the fact that three Fridays fell on the thirteenth that year. The Stress Management Center and Phobia Institute estimates that $700-$800 million dollars are lost every Friday the 13th due to people’s refusal to travel, purchase major items, or conduct business.

Then came Jason. In 1980, Paramount Pictures released Friday the 13th , a slasher flick about a series of murders at a summer camp. Apparently Jason, born on Friday the 13th, chooses that date to take revenge on oversexed campers much like the ones who allowed him to drown in Crystal Lake. So much for trust falls and lanyard making.

Friday the 13th grossed almost $40 million at the box office and inspired a long-running franchise: Friday the 13th Part II; Friday the 13th Part III; Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter ; Friday the 13th: Jason Lives; Friday the 13th: The New Blood; Friday the 13th: Jason Takes Manhattan ; Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday; Jason X; and 2003’s Freddy vs. Jason. Maybe the number 13 isn’t so bad afterall.

Friday the 13th Myths:

• If you cut your hair on Friday the 13th, someone in your family will die.

• A child born on Friday the 13th will be unlucky for life.

• If a funeral procession passes you on Friday the 13th, you will be the next to die.

Friday the 13th Anecdotes:

•In 1913, a New York pastor tried to assuage couples’ fears by offering to marry them for free on Friday the 13th.

• In 1939, a small town in Indiana forced all black cats to wear bells on Friday, October 13th. When the measure seemed to work the town continued the practice for the next three years.

•At the time, October 13, 1989 was the second largest Dow drop in history. Nicknamed the “Friday the 13th mini-crash,” these days it’s not even in the top 10. That might be the scariest fact of all.

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Dollhouse: Who Does Joss Whedon Think He Is?

Echo has an endlessly challenging job. On one assignment, she might play a hostage negotiator; on another, a midwife; on still another, a woman in love. Then she gets chauffeured to a treatment at a spalike facility filled with warm light and blond wood. It’s a little like being a Hollywood actress on location.

But not exactly. Echo’s “engagements”–ranging from deadly capers to prostitution–are real. That spa treatment is a sometimes painful process in which her personality and all memory of her missions are erased. And her luxury digs, called the Dollhouse, are the headquarters of a secret illegal business where she and other blank-canvas “actives” are programmed with new personalities to do hush-hush jobs for the superrich. Writer-producer Joss Whedon has played with the conventions of monster stories , space sagas and comic books . Now, with Dollhouse , he tries dystopian sci-fi. Echo is not a slave, technically; she goes to the Dollhouse after having run into unspecified trouble as an idealistic college grad named Caroline. The deal: if she becomes an active, the company makes her problem go away–along with all her memories. The threads running through this ambitious serial: Who was she And what is she A Real DollYou may have a few other questions, most of them beginning, Why Why would zillionaires rent human-bot experts and escorts from a high-tech flesh peddler when they could hire the real thing Why would someone develop an amazing technology and find no more remunerative application for it than an illegal outfit that seems exorbitant to maintain and nearly impossible to conceal And why–as eventually develops–would someone begin an equally elaborate counterconspiracy to sabotage the group Whedon evidently thinks these are valid questions. He addresses them, not always persuasively, through FBI agent Paul Ballard , who’s determined to sniff out the Dollhouse. His bosses are skeptical that it even exists, let alone why anyone would patronize it. “If you have everything,” Ballard explains, “you want something else. Something more extreme, something more specific. Something perfect.” But all is not perfect at the Dollhouse. Echo has begun to recover memories, and the actives show a tendency to occasionally go haywire. It turns out that human memory is like an analog cassette tape: overwrite it too many times, and you start to hear the ghosts of old voices. Actives are meant to be clean slates, with no messy human baggage. But as preamnesia Echo notes, “You ever try cleaning an actual slate You can always see what was on it before.” Multiple Personalities Just as curious, and ethically intriguing, is what gets written on that slate. For each job, an active is overwritten with a customized composite of the minds and memories of actual people. Some of those people, like the voices on an old laugh track, are now dead. Which raises questions: What does it mean to be alive What is the Dollhouse’s obligation to the people whose memories it “resurrects” Is Echo herself, Caroline or the sum of her borrowed parts Echo has a different assignment each episode–the three sent for review are a hostage case, a wilderness adventure and a heist caper–which makes Dollhouse a kind of drama-school exercise for Whedon and Dushku. The genre-hopping Whedon is up to the task; his hostage-negotiation story would make a crisp pilot for a CBS procedural. And he unsettlingly conveys the actives’ experience of living a constantly interrupted dream. But Dushku, memorable as the bad-girl Faith in Buffy, isn’t much of a chameleon. She’s passably callow as Caroline and nicely eerie as the doll-like “blank” Echo, but she doesn’t transform with each personality, Ã la Toni Collette in United States of Tara. It’s a problem, because Whedon has set a challenging goal. Whereas his past series had ready-made good-vs.-evil setups, Dollhouse is morally nebulous. Sometimes we’re rooting for Ballard to bust the Dollhouse, sometimes we’re rooting for Echo’s handlers and protectors in the organization that pimps her out. Pulling this off means getting the audience to connect with a lead who is not, in the usual sense, a person, which may be more than Echo–or Dushku–can manage. What keeps Dollhouse interesting is its ideas about memory and the self. But while it’s haunting, cerebral and gorgeous, it’s also a little cold, though the flashes of humor help. Like its actives, it’s a marvelous piece of engineering. But I hope it develops a personality of its own. See the 100 best TV shows of all time. See the best and worst Super Bowl commercials of 2009.

Few Clues in Suburban Buffalo Plane Crash

The commuter plane that crashed into a home near Buffalo, N.Y., was new and had a clean safety record, officials said Friday, leaving investigators few immediate clues about why it suddenly plunged just minutes before its planned landing, killing 50 people.

The twin turboprop aircraft — Continental Connection Flight 3407 from Newark, N.J. — was coming in for a landing when it went crashed Thursday night about five miles short of the Buffalo Niagara International Airport. It was the first commercial airline crash in the U.S. in 2 1/2 years.

The cause of the disaster was under investigation, but other pilots were overheard around the same time complaining of ice building up on their wings — a hazard that has caused major crashes in the past.
The twin turboprop aircraft — Continental Connection Flight 3407 from Newark, N.J. — was coming in for a landing when it went down in light snow and fog around 10:20 p.m. Thursday about five miles short of the Buffalo Niagara International Airport.
Witnesses heard the plane sputtering before it plunged squarely through the roof of the house, its tail section visible through flames shooting at least 50 feet high.
“The whole sky was lit up orange,” said Bob Dworak, who lives less than a mile away. “All the sudden, there was a big bang, and the house shook.”
Two others in the house escaped with minor injuries. The plane was carrying a four-member crew and an off-duty pilot. Among the 44 passengers killed was a woman whose husband died in the World Trade Center attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
Federal investigators found the black box recorders in the plane’s tail that could shed light on what went wrong, but they said the smoldering debris was still too hot to remove any bodies. The recorders were on their way to Washington for examination.
The 74-seat Q400 Bombardier aircraft, also known as the Dash 8, in Thursday’s disaster was operated by Colgan Air, based in Manassas, Va. Colgan’s parent company, Pinnacle Airlines of Memphis, Tenn., said the plane was new and had a clean safety record.
The nearly vertical drop of the plane suggests a sudden loss of control, said William Voss, a former official of the Federal Aviation Administration and current president of the Flight Safety Foundation, a nonprofit advocacy group.
Voss suggested that icing or a mechanical failure, such as wing flaps deploying asymmetrically or the two engines putting out different thrust, might have caused the crash, he said.
“It’s an aircraft that’s had flawless service,” said Philip H. Trenary, who heads Pinnacle Airlines and Colgan. “So no, there have been no indications of problems with the aircraft.”

Pakistan: Video appears to show kidnapped U.N. official

A soldier stands guard where John Solecki was kidnapped in Quetta, Pakistan, in early February.
A video that aired Friday on Pakistan’s Geo TV network appears to show John Solecki, an American U.N. official kidnapped earlier this month in Quetta, Pakistan.

In the video, the man who appears to be Solecki says: “This is a message to the United Nations. I am not feeling well. I’m in trouble. “Please help solve the problem soon so I can gain my release.” Geo TV said the tape was sent to its News Online Web site and posted there before it aired on the network. Solecki heads the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees office in Quetta, a city in southwestern Pakistan that is the provincial capital of Balochistan, the United Nations said. Maki Shinohara, UNHCR spokeswoman in Pakistan, told CNN Friday the organization has not been able to determine which group is holding Solecki. Watch video of man believed to be John Solecki » UNHCR is seeking a direct contact so it can find out what the demands are for Solecki’s release.

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He was kidnapped by militants February 2 while on his way to work, in a brazen daylight attack, the organization said. His driver, Syed Hashim of Quetta, was fatally injured, police said. No group has claimed responsibility for abducting Solecki.

His father, Ralph Solecki of South Orange, New Jersey, told CNN Friday he was aware of the video but had no comment. Shortly after the kidnapping, the U.N. office in Islamabad said it was “taking all possible measures to secure (Solecki’s) release.”

9/11 widow among Buffalo flight victims

Sean Rooney and wife Beverly Eckert in an undated photograph.
President Barack Obama on Friday praised Beverly Eckert, the widow of a 9/11 victim and prominent post-9/11 activist, who was one of the passengers who died in a plane crash outside Buffalo, New York.

“Beverly lost her husband on 9/11,” Obama said, “and became a tireless advocate for the families whose lives were forever changed on that September day.” A resident of Stamford, Connecticut, Eckert was the widow of Buffalo native Sean Rooney, who died at the World Trade Center. Obama’s words underscored the shock and grief from friends, family and acquaintances over the news that Eckert was aboard the Continental Connection Flight 3407 that crashed, killing all 49 aboard and one on the ground. “Tragic events such as these remind us of the fragility of life and the value of every single day. And one person who understood that well was Beverly Eckert, who was on that flight and who I met with just a few days ago,” Obama said in brief remarks. Obama met Eckert at a meeting of September 11, 2001, victims last Friday. Valerie Lucznikowska, a member of September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, told CNN that she, Eckert and another woman traveled to Washington to attend the meeting. Lucznikowska said Eckert asked Obama whether the group would have ongoing meetings with his administration. Obama said there would be, even though they wouldn’t necessarily be with him.

After the 2001 terrorist attacks, Eckert co-founded “Voices of September 11,” an advocate group for survivors and 9/11 families. Eckert had a reputation as a strong campaigner of 9/11 families, involved in protests leading to more land for a Ground Zero memorial, working on the 9/11 Commission’s Family Steering Committee, and pushing for a victims’ families compensation fund. She was traveling to Buffalo for a weekend celebration of what would have been her husband’s 58th birthday. Eckert also planned to take part in presenting a scholarship award at Canisius High School that was established in honor of her late husband, who was a school alumni, according to the school’s president, John Knight. Obama mentioned the scholarship plans in his remarks Friday.

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“In keeping with that passionate commitment, she was on her way to Buffalo to mark what would have been her husband’s birthday and launch a scholarship in his memory. She was an inspiration to me and to so many others, and I pray that her family finds peace and comfort in the hard days ahead,” Obama said. Lucznikowska, whose nephew died in the World Trade Center attacks, said she was “horribly saddened by this news.” “I would very much like to honor her. She was truly a wonderful person. She was someone who was trying to make society better.” Eckert backed Peaceful Tomorrows’ effort to close the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay and end the military commissions there, Lucznikowska said. The group elaborated on this stance in a signed letter to Obama, and Eckert gave a presidential aide a separate letter listing her own concerns, Lucznikowska said. Canisius High’s Knight said the school postponed the scholarship presentation set to occur at noon Friday for two students entering the high school next fall. He said Eckert also had been active in a capital campaign fund-raising effort. “She struck me as a wonderful, beautiful person who clearly wanted to do something to remember her husband in a way that would have an everlasting impact on our community,” Knight said. Gordon Felt, president of The Families of Flight 93 Inc., the 9/11 plane that crashed near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, also expressed his grief. “We note with deep sorrow the passing of Beverly Eckert in the Buffalo plane crash. She was a 9/11 family member who brought to light issues of importance to all of us — and to all Americans. We extend our condolences to her family and to all those who loved her. She will be missed.” Jay Winuk, a 9/11 organizational leader who lost his brother in the World Trade Center attack, said that while he did not know Eckert personally, “it is clear that she was a terrific advocate for the 9/11 family community.”

House passes stimulus bill

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, here with Rep. Steny Hoyer, delayed the House vote until Friday.
The House of Representatives on Friday approved a $787 billion economic stimulus bill by a vote of 246-183.

Final Senate approval is likely to come as early as Friday evening. The House vote came after a day of tense debate on the chamber’s floor. Some representatives expressed frustration over how little time they had to read the 1,000-plus page bill. The bill came out around 11 p.m. Thursday. “You can’t be serious. This would be humorous if it wasn’t so sad,” said Rep. Tom Price, R-Georgia. “What’s in it Have you read it” Rep. Zach Wamp, R-Tennessee, encouraged his colleagues to vote no. “Just because Republicans spent too much money after September 11 and lost our way on financial matters doesn’t mean the Democratic party should be allowed to wreck our ship of state. This is taking us quickly down the wrong road. Vote no,” Wamp said. Other lawmakers, however, said they were hopeful the stimulus plan would get the economy back on track.

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“We know this bill alone will not solve all of our economic woes overnight. We know that the road back to economic stability and prosperity will require hard work over time,” said Rep. Ed Perlmutter, D-Colorado. “But this bill is the right size and scope necessary to truly help us turn things around.” Despite direct lobbying by the Obama administration in the last couple of weeks, many moderate House Republicans still firmly opposed the bill. No Republicans supported the House version of the plan earlier. Before the House originally voted on the stimulus measure in January, 11 House Republicans attended a meeting at the White House with Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel to discuss their possible support. Rep. Jim Gerlach, R-Pennsylvania, said he got calls from two Cabinet members Thursday — Housing and Development Secretary Shaun Donovan and Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood — but said the bill didn’t include the “fundamental change I think is needed.” Another Republican, Rep. Candice Miller of Michigan, said she believes the compromise between the House and Senate is worse than the original House bill. “I really wanted to get to ‘yes’ because Lord knows we need the help in Michigan,” she said. Miller said she asked for more direct help for the ailing auto industry and was disappointed the tax credit for auto buyers was reduced. President Obama made an impassioned final plea earlier Friday for passage of the plan, arguing that it is a critical first step on the road to economic recovery. “I don’t need to tell you that we are in tough economic times,” Obama said to a group of business leaders at the White House hours before the most important congressional vote of his young administration. The stimulus package is likely to land on Obama’s desk by the Democratic leadership’s self-imposed deadline of Presidents Day on Monday. Watch Obama say it’s time for Congress to act » Taking no chances, the Democratic National Committee and Obama’s Organizing for America also are using Obama’s vast e-mail list to contact the president’s political supporters and point them to a new Web page for stories of people affected by the economic downturn. The goal is to drum up public support for the measure as Congress prepares to vote on it. CNNMoney: How the stimulus may affect your wallet The stories were collected last weekend from Obama supporters who attended one of 3,600 meetings held across the country to discuss the situation, according to the DNC. In all, 31,030 stories were submitted to the DNC and Organizing for America, a grass-roots movement that grew out of the campaign. Read the stories The House, which had originally planned to vote on the package Thursday, was forced to wait until Friday after many rank-and-file Democrats who were unhappy with some spending cuts demanded time to read the compromise measure. iReport: Your thoughts on the stimulus The Senate vote will be held open for the arrival of Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, who will be attending a wake for his mother until about 8 p.m. Friday, said Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada. Despite the grumblings of some House Democrats unhappy with the spending measures, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-California, said Thursday she was pleased with the outcome of the negotiations. Read the compromise: Part 1 | Part 2 The stimulus deal was struck Wednesday after a furious day of negotiations on Capitol Hill involving House and Senate leaders, administration officials and the three moderate Republicans: Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania. Of the 219 Republicans in Congress, they were the only ones who backed the bill. Reid on Thursday was calling on other Republican centrists in an attempt to persuade more of them to vote for the measure, an aide said. The Senate’s version of the bill narrowly passed Tuesday by a 61-37 vote — one more than needed. Reid was looking for additional votes out of an abundance of caution, the aide said, after learning that Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Massachusetts, who returned to Capitol Hill for votes earlier this week, will not be present for the final vote because he returned to Florida to continue his recovery from brain cancer. Reid was concerned that if a Democratic senator gets sick or has some other unforeseen obligation, he could have trouble getting the bill passed, the aide said. Reid also was concerned because the three GOP moderates suggested they did not want to provide the decisive 60th vote for passage, the aide said. Here’s how the compromise bill is expected to affect individuals: Most individuals will get a $400 tax credit, and most couples will get an $800 credit. That amounts to an extra $13 a week in a person’s paycheck, starting in June. That’s less than what Obama campaigned on — $500 for individuals and $1,000 per couple. Many students will get $2,500 tuition tax credit. First-time home buyers may qualify for a tax credit of up to $8,000.

People who receive Social Security will get a one-time payment of $250. The overall package is estimated to be 35 percent tax cuts and 65 percent spending, Democratic sources said.

Crash victims include rights campaigner, beloved cantor

Alison Des Forges was senior adviser of the New York-based Human Rights Watch's Africa Division.
A human rights official known for her expertise on the Rwanda genocide. A 9/11 widow who channeled her grief into fighting for survivors and families. A beloved cantor.

Portraits are emerging of the 50 people who died Thursday night when a Continental Airlines flight operated by Colgan Air crashed into a home near Buffalo, New York. All 49 aboard the plane died, along with one person on the ground. Alison Des Forges, senior adviser of the New York-based Human Rights Watch’s Africa Division, was one of the people on Flight 3407, the group told CNN on Friday. Des Forges, who lived in Buffalo, spent four years in Rwanda documenting the 1994 genocide and had testified about that atrocity and the current situation in central Africa before U.N. and congressional panels, the group said. Her biography on the HRW Web site says she is a historical who also is an expert on Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Des Forges was a French-speaker who earned her bachelor’s in history from Harvard University and her doctorate in history from Yale University. Another victim was Beverly Eckert, the widow of 9/11 victim Sean Rooney, who died in the World Trade Center.

After the 2001 terrorist attacks, Eckert co-founded “Voices of September 11,” an advocate group for survivors and 9/11 families. She had a reputation as a strong campaigner of 9/11 families, involved in protests leading to more land for a Ground Zero memorial, working on the 9/11 Commission’s Family Steering Committee, and pushing for a victims’ families compensation fund. A resident of Connecticut, Eckert was traveling to Buffalo for a weekend celebration of what would have been her husband’s 58th birthday. Also on the plane was 55-year-old Susan Wehle, cantor of Temple Beth Am in Williamsville, New York, said synagogue administrator Richard Ellis. “She was a very very spiritual person,” Ellis said.

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“She just glowed with excitement and energy when she talked about her spirit and the spirit of religion that lives within her. She expressed that in so many ways.” Ellis had been planning to drive to the airport to pick up Wehle when she arrived in Buffalo on Thursday. But instead of getting a text message from her at the Buffalo airport, he saw the news that a plane from Newark had crashed. Before Wehle joined the Temple Beth Am, she was a cantorial soloist at Temple Sinai in Amherst, New York. Wehle taught music workshops, conducted choirs, and performed in concerts and with theater companies, according to a biography on the temple Web site. She released a CD called “Songs of Hope and Healing.” She is survived by two sons, one in Israel and another in Vermont. Ellis said Wehle, who lived in Amherst, was well known across the religious spectrum through her interfaith work. People were shocked to hear about Wehle, he said. “She’s going to be so missed by the whole community, not just the Jewish community,” Ellis said. “She was loved by everyone.” Colgan Air, which operated Continental Connection Flight 3407, identified Friday the plane’s crew members. They included: Pilot Capt. Marvin Renslow; 1st Officer Rebecca Shaw; and flight attendants Matilda Quintero and Donna Prisco. An off-duty crew member, who was also on the flight, was identified as Capt. Joseph Zuffoletto.