CAROL FLYZIK
NH VICTIMS:
A family is haunted by last fatal
minutes
http://www.theunionleader.com/Articles_show.html?article=5253&archive=1
By JASON SCHREIBER
Union Leader
Correspondent
CAROL FLYZIK |
That’s one of the most painful parts of this American tragedy for the Plaistow woman’s grieving family.
“That is my biggest fear. What was she thinking?” wondered Flyzik’s brother, Mark, also a Plaistow resident and a former dispatcher for the Plaistow Police Department.
His wife, Cathy, said yesterday it’s difficult to imagine the horror those passengers felt after their plane left Boston’s Logan International Airport and was overtaken by terrorists. “What was happening to them? They must have all been in terror,” she said.
The 40-year-old Flyzik is among the growing list of New Hampshire residents who perished in Tuesday’s terrorist attack.
The supervisor of marketing support for Medical Information Technology Inc. of Westwood, Mass., Flyzik was flying to Los Angeles on a business trip. She was traveling to the West Coast for a series of product demonstrations for a company that sells medical software to health-care organizations.
Flyzik’s death has left family and friends stunned.
For her family, there may never be that measure of peace that comes after a funeral. “You don’t have a body to bury,” Cathy Flyzik said.
Mark Flyzik, now a dispatcher for AT&T Broadband, was driving to work in Manchester when a radio broadcast reported two planes had struck New York City’s two World Trade Center towers. He had no idea his sister was taking a business trip, but as soon as he arrived at work he decided he should check with his sister’s roommate to make sure things were fine. They weren’t. He learned his sister had taken a flight, but no one was sure of the flight number.
Another sister, Claudia Flyzik of Atkinson, eventually received confirmation from American Airlines Tuesday night that Carol Flyzik was a passenger.
Waiting for word on his sister wasn’t easy.
“It was horrible,” recalled Mark Flyzik, who watched the television news coverage Tuesday and the painful images of the planes crashing into the towers played over and over.
Carol Flyzik, who moved to Plaistow in 1988, was remembered yesterday as a fun-loving person who was always giving of herself. She spent much of her free time renovating her Victorian home in Plaistow. A native of Georgetown, Mass., Flyzik studied nursing in college and worked for some time as a registered nurse at Hale Hospital in Haverhill, Mass.
“She was always there if you needed help,” Cathy Flyzik said. “She was just a wonderful person. It’s going to leave a big void in our lives. She’s going to be missed by a lot of people.”
Co-workers remembered Flyzik, who joined the company in 1997, as both a dedicated professional and a caring, warm-hearted colleague. “She worked very closely with a number of people. She was always willing to help someone,” said Larry Schmidt, the company’s senior marketing manager.
Like her family, many of Flyzik’s colleagues anxiously waited for word Tuesday on her flight status. “There was concern and some hoping for a miracle somehow. Now we’re remembering her very fondly. Our hearts go out to her family and friends,” Schmidt said.
While some passengers made frantic calls from their cell phones to loved ones before the crash, Flyzik didn’t have a phone with her. She used to have a cell phone, her brother said, but when it malfunctioned two years ago she never bought a new one.
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GEORGETOWN, Mass. — Carol Flyzik had it all.
She was funny.
She was talented.
No one could forget her infectious laugh or her collection of hats and squirt guns.
In school, she loved to compete in sports and to play the saxophone in the jazz band.
She was caring.
After spending many years working as an emergency room nurse, her friends and family believe, she must have tried to comfort the frightened passengers aboard American Airlines Flight 11 in the moments before it slammed into the World Trade Center in New York City last week.
Some 600 mourners, many wearing red, white and blue ribbons, packed the First Congregational Church in Georgetown yesterday afternoon for a memorial service for a woman who had touched so many lives.
Flyzik, 40, of Plaistow, N.H., was one of 92 passengers and crew members who perished in the terrorist attack on that dreadful day: Sept. 11, 2001.
Flyzik was the supervisor of marketing support for Medical Information Technology Inc. (Meditech) of Westwood and was flying to Los Angeles on a business trip when the plane was hijacked after taking off from Boston’s Logan International Airport.
The memorial service drew so many mourners that nearly 300 had to sit or stand on the front lawn outside the church and listen to the eulogies through a speaker.
Like other memorial services held across the country for the victims of the terrorist attacks, Flyzik’s had a patriotic theme. The service was not only a time to remember a great woman but also a time to show solidarity as America braces for war. Mourners lit white candles and sang “God Bless America.”
Several songs were played during the memorial service, but perhaps the most poignant was a recording of “Gonna Fly Now” performed by Flyzik on the saxophone and other members of the school band during her school days in Georgetown.
Flyzik’s brother-in-law, Ed Pritchard, read from a letter his wife, Linda, wrote to Carol after her death. In the letter, Linda Pritchard recalled watching news coverage of the rescuers sifting through the rubble in their search for survivors. “If you were alive, I know you would be there helping,” she wrote. That was Carol Flyzik, a woman who never hesitated to lend a helping hand.
Suzanne Cavan, a sister-in-law to Flyzik’s longtime partner, Nancy Walsh, described Flyzik as someone her friends and family could always count on. “In her simple goodness, Carol had nurtured so many others,” Cavan said.
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