Bellevue Couple Loved To Travel -- Flight Attendant, Teacher Had Planned 3-Day Trip To Paris

Scott and Marit Rhoads were destined to be together.

The Bellevue couple were sweethearts at Sammamish High School who went their separate ways after graduation in 1965. But when they met again 26 years later, they married after only three weeks.

Since their wedding in the spring of 1991, they had shared their love of travel by regularly taking trips together.

All this came to an abrupt end Wednesday night on TWA Flight 800. They were among the 230 people on board the 747 when it exploded shortly after takeoff.

They had planned to spend three days in Paris.

Marit, a TWA flight attendant for 25 years, had been scheduled to fly to Tel Aviv on Wednesday, but she rearranged her work schedule to accompany Scott, a middle-school teacher, to Paris.

"Because he had his summers off, he would normally accompany her on flights during the summer," said Rosie Rhoads, Scott's ex-wife and the mother of his two grown children, Tiffany, 27, and Matthew, 24, both of Chicago.

"You never think something like this is going to happen to you," Rosie said. "Then it does, and two people you knew and were close to are just taken away."

(Another member of the crew of the TWA flight was listed as Sandra Meade, 42, of Camano Island. Her family could not be reached last night.)

Both Scott, 49, and Marit, 48, were looking forward to retiring soon.

Scott taught English and social studies at Tillicum Middle School in Bellevue. He also coached there and at Newport High School.

"He loved children," said Rhoads' daughter, Tiffany, who is a flight attendant with American Airlines. "He was never condescending and was always on their level."

Scott was a linebacker coach for the varsity-football team, girls softball coach and former head wrestling coach at Newport.

Joe Grzetic, who graduated from Newport in 1994 after helping the football team win a state championship the year before, had known Rhoads as a coach and teacher at Tillicum.

"He was always going like a hundred miles an hour," Grzetic recalled, adding that Rhoads often used fun teaching techniques to drive home lessons in sixth-grade social studies.

It was Rhoads who encouraged Grzetic to join the school's new wrestling team. And when Grzetic wanted to play football at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, he went to Rhoads for a letter of recommendation.

"For me, he was like a second father," Grzetic said.

For some of his Newport coaching colleagues, Rhoads was a vital link among friends.

Newport football defensive coordinator Gary Taller said he and Rhoads had played golf together on Monday, and at the time he seemed excited about joining his wife for a short trip to Paris.

He was to return home Saturday, Taller said, and the two had made plans to meet again for golf next Monday.

"Come next year, going out (on the football field) and not having him there, that's going to be the hardest thing," Taller said. "Most of us have been together for a long time."

In fact, the team's head coach, Dan Holden, competed against Rhoads in the early 1960s when he played football at Bellevue High School and Rhoads quarterbacked Sammamish High School's team.

Holden and his wife, Kay Holden, often spent time with the Rhoadses.

Marit, said Kay, shared her husband's energy and love for people.

"She loved decorating, and she was really into physical fitness. She enjoyed her cat tremendously; it was her baby," she said.

Marit's father, Robert Thomas, of Allyn, Mason County, described her as "a great gal" with a large circle of friends on both coasts.

He last saw Marit, his only child, last Friday when he and his wife, Genevieve, celebrated their 55th wedding anniversary. During that gathering, Marit and Scott spoke at length of their plans to retire in two years and spend more time traveling.

Scott already had given up his position as head wrestling coach at Newport so he could take winter vacations with his wife, Taller said.

Robert Thomas said his daughter had always had a fondness for her ex-sweetheart's parents, and in the spring of 1991 she went to visit them in Arizona. Scott, finding out that she was there, decided to visit his parents.

In the next three weeks, they kept in constant phone contact. They met in San Francisco, decided to get married and soon found themselves standing in front of a judge in Redmond.

When news of the plane crash came Wednesday night, bright hopes for the Rhoadses turned into fear, confusion and finally frustration.

Scott's daughter, Tiffany, called her airline's flight service to find out whether her father and stepmother had been on the fatal flight. She didn't get her answer until 1 a.m. yesterday.

Although Thomas called most of Wednesday night to confirm the whereabouts of his daughter and son-in-law, the emergency line was continuously busy. His worst fears were confirmed yesterday morning by a TWA scheduling agent who referred to his daughter in the past tense.

"(TWA) said they would call us immediately once they identified the body, but they haven't called yet," Thomas said yesterday afternoon. "Maybe we were just too far down on the list."