Seattle Woman's Daughter, Son-In-Law Killed -- Flight Attendant From Camano Island Also On Plane

Hazel Charland said her daughter wrote her every few days, and Charland saved all the letters.

So when another one arrived yesterday, the North Seattle woman said she didn't think too much of it.

Little did she know her daughter's two-page letter - detailing her upcoming trip to Paris and Belgium - would be the last.

By early afternoon, it was confirmed. Charland's daughter, Eleanor Johnson, 50, and son-in-law Leonard Johnson, 53, of Springfield, Va., were on TWA Flight 800, which exploded and crashed Wednesday.

Leonard Johnson, raised in Bellevue, and Eleanor Johnson, raised in Seattle, graduated from the University of Washington and returned to Seattle often.

"She just mailed it before she left," Charland, 84, said yesterday, holding the letter. "I feel like I have not absorbed the full fact that I have lost my daughter."

The letter details how the couple, who had just celebrated their 30th wedding anniversary, were traveling to Paris for a few days before going to Brugge, Belgium, for an annual NATO conference.

Leonard Johnson, a civilian mechanical engineer for the Army at Fort Belvoir, Va., attended the conference every year. This time, Eleanor, recently retired as vice president of an editing firm, joined him.

When news of the crash broke Wednesday night, Charland and her husband, Ernest, didn't worry, they said.

They were certain the two would have flown out of Washington, D.C., not New York, where Flight 800 originated.

It wasn't until yesterday that the realization set in. First, Eleanor and Leonard didn't call to say they were all right.Then Eleanor's sister called to say TWA had finally returned a call and confirmed the Johnsons were on the list of victims.

The Johnsons left two children, Eric, 25, and Christina, 21, and a city full of old friends, Charland said.

Camano woman on flight

Also aboard the plane was TWA flight attendant Sandra Meade, 42, of Camano Island.

Ron Nugent of Edmonds, also a TWA flight attendant, knew her well and was overwhelmed by the death of Meade and other crew members aboard the flight.

"I'm devastated; everyone who has been mentioned, I know all of them," he said.

Nugent said Meade worked extra shifts in order to pay for the A-frame home she bought on Camano Island two years ago. Meade, a native of Western Washington, lived in New York for some 20 years until moving to Camano, "which she just loved," he said.

Mackie Gidlos, one of her neighbors, said Meade's passion was gardening, and she had qualified to be a Master Gardener. She was highly independent, Gidlos said; "It didn't seem like she was afraid to try anything."

Nugent predicted that TWA flight attendants and other crew members, who select their routes by seniority, are going to try to avoid international flights for a while. "It makes you think," he added.