CLARENCE, N.Y. — Summer West was two when her father, Ernie, perished with 49 other souls in the crash of Continental Flight 3407 on February 12, 2009.
A decade later, she is a lively and happy pre-teen, busily preparing for her school musical.
She knows through pictures and through the stories she is told that her father was a good man who loved her dearly.
However, at age 12, Summer has no direct memory of him.
"I don't really feel too sad about it because I was only 2 years old. If he had died when I was 10 or older, then I probably would be sad about it because I would have gotten to know him,” she said.
“When she says to me, ‘mom, I’m not sad, I’m happy’, that’s the best thing I could hear, said Jennifer West. “Because that was my goal for her. To be a normal, happy well-adjusted child".
It’s the way her husband would have wanted it.
“He wanted her to be happy, loved and feel safe…and that’s what gets you through,” Mrs. West said.
An Only Parent
Not that it has been easy being an “only” parent, about which Jennifer West makes a distinction.
“I like to say I’m not a single parent. I’m an only parent… because even in divorce, the wife still has a husband and the child still has a father whereas I don’t have anybody. I'm kind of in the role of mother and father and so it's a little different and a little more difficult." West said.
“When I look back on it, sometimes I wonder how I even got by,” West recalled, when she had been suddenly left without a husband and a small child to care for on her own.
“But I think for me, something just kicked in. Either you sink or you swim…and I swam,” she said.
Honoring Ernie Their Way…and His.
Together the Wests have done their share with the rest of the 3407 families to fight for increased airline safety in the wake of the crash, with Summer even speaking to members of Congress.
“That’s tangible…that helps people that helps save lives, and that's why I got her involved," West said.
However, when it came to the full two days of events planned to mark the 10th Anniversary of the crash, West and her daughter had no plans to attend any of them.
“We like to celebrate how he lived, not how he died, and to me celebrating his death date isn't something I want to do,” West explained.
Not Their Scene
“To each his own,” West continued. “I’m just speaking for myself personally. I don’t judge anyone who needs to do what they have to do to grieve, but it tore me apart,” she said, when recalling the events marking past anniversaries of the crash which she did once attend.
“Things like the vigils…it would set me back for days, until I got the epiphany on the fifth year when I realized Ernie would never want me to put myself in that depression. It was almost like he was speaking to me and saying, ‘stop it! I'm not there. I'm in your house, I’m in your heart. I’m everywhere’,” she said.
And Ernie West’s presence is perhaps nowhere more evident, than when she looks at her daughter.
An Ever Present, and Loving Reminder
Summer’s facial expressions, even the way she walks, are a constant reminder of the man who was her father and Jennifer’s husband.
“Sometimes she’ll just be looking at me, and then she’ll go, “oh my God, it’s Ernie’!”, laughed Summer.
For now, their journey still involves just the two of them.
“He set the bar pretty high,” West explained.
So until such time that fate might determine there is someone of such standards...it'll be just Jennifer and Summer.
Laughing, loving, and living.
“We honor Ernie every day just by being happy and living life to the fullest," West said.
Just the way he would have wanted them to be.