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Flight 427 widow gives others practical support
Thursday, June 07, 2001 By Barbara Vancheri, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
The title of her book says it all: "Widowed Without Warning."
Just after 7 p.m. on Sept. 8, 1994, Joanne Shortley crossed the invisible, agonizing line from wife to widow. The official confirmation wouldn't come until 2:45 a.m. the next day, when USAir verified that the man she had met as a 16-year-old and married two years later was gone. She was widowed without warning, adrift in a media maelstrom with nightmarish thoughts of a plummeting plane. She was 38 years old.
Stephen M. Shortley, husband of two decades, father of two teen-agers, management consultant for Ernst & Young, fan of Stephen King novels, sci-fi movies, Snickers bars and double-stuffed Oreos, was dead. He would become part of Pittsburgh's legacy of loss, a businessman who was among the 132 passengers and crew members on the ill-fated Flight 427.
When the Ross woman went to the bookstores in search of something that would be easy to read (given her shaky concentration due to shock) and written from the perspective of a widow or widower, she came up empty. "I decided to write a book I would have liked to read when I was going through the pain -- to help others deal with the loneliness, the shock, the grief," she says, by phone.
After all, she knew what it was like to leave the bath towel her husband had used hanging on the shower door for a year. She knew what it was like to want to cry at the sight of men's dress shirts and ties in a department store. She knew what it was like to spend her nights with insomnia and Nick at Nite comedies. She knew what it was like to retreat, in tears, to a restaurant restroom on New Year's Eve and wish she had just stayed home alone with a video.
And years later, she would know the wisdom of her Uncle Jack, who had told her she would never forget Steve and she shouldn't try.
"I would always carry the scar with me for the rest of my life and it was all right to do that. I would learn how to add on in my life. I have added on. I'll never forget Steve. I'll never forget the crash. It's with me every single day."
It's with her now, when she is Joanne Shortley-Lalonde. She is 45 and living in Bowling Green, Ky., with the man she married on Valentine's Day 1999.
J.P. Lalonde had lost his wife to a brain aneurysm. Today, their blended family consists of her children -- a daughter, 25 and a son, 24, both college graduates -- and his daughters, ages 17, 16 and 14, busy with just-finished classes, proms and basketball practice.
As Shortley-Lalonde writes in her book: "I realized that losing a spouse didn't mean the end of the world. Only the end of that particular world. Falling in love again did not mean I loved my husband any less. It meant that I was capable of loving again. I was doing just as my Uncle Jack suggested. I was 'adding on.'
"It was now up to me to make a whole new life. As difficult as it was, I needed to think of it as a new adventure. A new beginning. I had to take many deep breaths and throw away the anger and the bitterness."
The book, a touching, readable blend of practical advice and personal recollections, closes with a chapter titled "What I Have Learned" and a portrait of a stronger, more independent woman who -- above all -- learned she was a survivor.
"I am proud of the fact that I can balance my own checkbook to the penny, pump my own gas (although I dread that the most), fill my own wiper fluid, pay my own bills, carry my own luggage and understand the difference between stocks and mutual funds. I can use the outdoor grill as well as any man," in addition to changing a furnace filter and handling other tasks that once might have fallen to her husband.
A one-page epilogue in "Widowed Without Warning" is about her Feb. 14, 1999, marriage, the result of a friendship struck up on the Internet and cautiously nursed. As she says from Bowling Green, where her husband works for the General Motors Corvette plant, "If you notice in the book, it did end before I got married. ... If I wouldn't have gotten married, I was still OK. I chose to be married again."
Shortley-Lalonde, who spent most of her married life in Brighton Heights and sold her Ross home in early 2000, said her book's title isn't meant to exclude readers who didn't lose loved ones as she did. That, of course, is an exclusive club no one would willingly join.
"I chose the title 'Widowed Without Warning' for myself. I had no warning I would never see my husband again. The book isn't just about losing someone instantly, it's about loss and survival," about helping grieving friends or relatives and cherishing the husbands, wives, children, parents and siblings still here.
Shortley-Lalonde suggests mourners don't want to hear "It's for the best" or "He's with God now" or "You'll get over it" in a year or two or three.
So what should people say?
Sometimes the simplest sentiment is the best, such as "I'm so sorry, I don't know what to say" or "This should not have happened." A neighbor sent a note recalling how she remembered the couple holding hands as they walked around the block and "I know you're going to miss him, how can I help?"
She says, "I appreciated having my pain validated, not dismissed." She was proof that in a minute, literally, the life you built can collapse. People who have read the book and had not lost a spouse have told her it reminded them not to take anyone or anything for granted.
In her 103-page book, Shortley-Lalonde recalls joining four other widows on a plane trip and being seated in the same row as a woman traveling alone. The stranger mentioned that her husband insisted they travel separately in case of plane crashes -- can you imagine? After peppering the women with comments about how lucky they were to have a girls-only vacation and asking if their spouses worked together, one of the widows quietly shared their story.
"When the plane landed, she literally raced up the aisle and ran down the ramp ... into her husband's arms, I am sure."
Shortley-Lalonde was one of the more vocal and visible Pittsburghers who helped to form the 427 Air Disaster Support League, met with the American Red Cross to recommend the use of professional grief counselors, attended all of the National Transportation Safety Board hearings and stood behind President Clinton as he signed the Aviation Disaster Family Assistance Act. A belated bill of rights for relatives of victims, it was spurred by the ValuJet and TWA crashes.
Although some people wondered why Shortley-Lalonde wanted to put herself through the agony of the hearings, she says, "It was important, even though it was difficult emotionally at times, listening to people talk casually about the technical design of the rudders and all I could think of was the brutal way my husband died."
She thought she would be sick watching the computer simulation of the Boeing 737-300 as it crashed into a wooded ravine in Beaver County. But she says, "If it were me who had died, I knew Steve would be there with notebook and pen, speaking into the microphone, talking to the newsperson," making his voice heard.
Shortley-Lalonde's book is drawn largely from memory, although she did start keeping a journal two weeks after the crash when the shock started to dull enough to once again allow her to write. "Most of the stuff, I'll probably never forget," such as the feeling of loneliness when she spent the first day in her house by herself.
"To me, grieving begins the day after the funeral, when everyone goes to pick up their normal lives." Her Web site, www.widowedwithoutwarning.com, has attracted e-mail from a number of women who have lost husbands to illness, especially cancer.
You can order the $12.95 book from that Web site or from www.iUniverse.com (click on bookstore on the left) or from Barnes & Noble stores. "Because I'm an unknown first-time author, it will take a while before any stores put it on the bookshelves," she says.
Without Oprah or Rosie to plump up sales, she's only got herself. But some days, that seems to be enough and she is working on another book about becoming a stepmother.
"I have journals from the first day I met the girls. I describe, 'There's no way I'm going to do this, can do this,' but here I am three years later," although she is no fan of the word "stepmother," having been demonized by Disney cartoons. She prefers to think of herself as second mom.
She has no tentative publication date in mind. "I just work on it as I can. My life is so full every day with the kids, I just write in my spare time."
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