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Retired cheerleading coach continues tradition of remembering Montoursville Flight 800 victims

“It was so impressive, so touching to the girls it was something we decided we would do every year."

  • John Beauge/PennLive
Visitors look at the Flight 800 Memorial in front of the Montoursville High School in Montoursville, Pa., Monday, July 17, 2006 before a service for those who died. Sixteen foreign language students along their five chaperones, all from Montoursville, died on TWA Flight 800 when it exploded off the coast of Long Island and crashed into the Atlantic Ocean on July 17, 1996. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

 Carolyn Kaster / The Associated Press

Visitors look at the Flight 800 Memorial in front of the Montoursville High School in Montoursville, Pa., Monday, July 17, 2006 before a service for those who died. Sixteen foreign language students along their five chaperones, all from Montoursville, died on TWA Flight 800 when it exploded off the coast of Long Island and crashed into the Atlantic Ocean on July 17, 1996. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

(Montoursville) —  Twenty-three years ago this Wednesday, Skip Pulcrano was at home in New Jersey when he heard an explosion he first thought was thunder.

It was not a storm but — as he quickly learned — TWA Flight 800 exploding off Long Island, killing all 230 on board, including 16 members of the Montoursville Area High School French Club and five chaperones.

The crash of the Paris-bound jet was the start of a relationship Pulcrano has had with Montoursville ever since.

In 1996 he was the full-time coach of ShoreCheer, a cheerleading group in Manasquan, N.J., that had the motto: “Beyond the Competition.” He explained he encouraged the girls to get involved in the community.

The New Jersey cheerleaders had no link with Montoursville but they wanted to do something because cheerleaders were among school’s victims.

Pulcrano brought a group of his cheerleaders to a grieving Montoursville about a month after the crash bringing messages from throughout the country.

“It was so impressive, so touching to the girls it was something we decided we would do every year,” he said. “It’s become a tradition.”

Pulcano doesn’t have the students any longer because he is retired, but he continues to return each year on or about the anniversary of the tragedy.

Skip Pulcrano speaks with Charles F. Grimm, left, after handing him a yellow rose Sunday in memory of his daughter Julia who was among the Montoursville Area High School students killed when Paris-bound TWA Flight 800 exploded off Long Island 23 years ago this Wednesday. Pulcrano, a retired New Jersey cheerleading coach, annually visits the monument (visible in the background) in Montoursville containing the names of the 16 students and five chaperons killed in the crash.

He made his annual visit Sunday for a brief event in the Flight 800 memorial park that is adjacent to the high school. The park is surrounded by 21 trees and contains a monument with the names of the Montoursville victims.

This year he brought with him 21 yellow roses he had first taken to the Flight 800 Memorial on Long Island. There, he took a picture of each rose with the Montoursville victims’ names on that monument in the background.

The roses, each of which he labeled by name, were placed in front of the local monument by victims’ parents and community members. Pulcrano gave them the pictures he took at the Long Island memorial.

Among those receiving a rose and picture was Charles F. Grimm, whose 15-year-old daughter Julia was one of the victims.

Asked if it seems like 23 years have passed, Grimm said: “Sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes it seems like yesterday and sometimes it seems like forever.” She is always in my heart, he added.

Over the years Pulcrano has kept in contact with four Montoursville cheerleaders from the 1996 squad, including Heather Harris, who attended the event.

“We developed this amazing friendship,” she said. They are friends on Facebook “so we talk all year long.”

“I think about it all the time,” Harris said about the tragedy. Had her parents given into her persistent begging she would have been on Flight 800. “They said absolutely not.”

She was a member of the Spanish Club, but so was one of the students who went, she said.

The National Transportation Safety Board determined the cause of the explosion was likely a short circuit that ignited fuel vapors as the pilots were shifting fuel to better balance the airplane.

Some, however, believe the plane was hit by a missile strike from a terrorist or an accidental launch by the U.S. Navy.

 

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