Sandy was laid to rest yesterday afternoon in a family plot in the Virginia countryside, adjacent to the small church where she was baptized as a child.

Before the funeral, small white clouds decorated a light blue Virginia sky as cars from New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Florida and beyond poured into the old redbrick church's parking lot. Soon, the lot was full and church directors were guiding cars behind the church, beside a playground or where ever there was an empty patch of ground. Before long....there was no empty ground....only a sea of people coming to say goodbye.

The service was brief...just a little over 30 minutes. During that time Sandy was remembered as a lover of life and woman of tremendous energy. Guests filled the church to capacity, overflow watched and listened to the service in several adjacent rooms via closed circuit television.

Following the service, the family laid Sandy's beautiful yet simple wooden coffin to rest in a private ceremony, while guests waited inside, remembering Sandy with a display of photographs. The photo's ranged from her early childhood, high school cheerleading and her wedding to Brad, up to recent photos of her with her family and skydiving friends. The photos of Sandy's body coming home from Chicago were also displayed...right next to a photo or her and Hanna playing, and a small painting of Jesus.

Soon people began to trickle out of the church's front door. Most watched from afar as little Hanna stood amid the sea of flowers adorning her mother's gravesite....arranging them just so....picking out the pussy willows and giving them to the other children to play with. I listened to her try to explain to a younger child that, "My mom was killed and now she's buried under all these flowers." She said it so matter-of-factly that I'm not sure if it has sunk in yet. I asked Hanna if she would pick out a one of her mother's flowers to send back to Chicago for the people who couldn't come....by the time you read this, the pink and white carnation should be there.

By 4pm, we could hear thunder in the far off distance....and skies to the south were growing dark. The small white clouds that greeted us when we went into the church, had stretched skyward to the upper limits of the atmosphere. As friends hugged their good-byes and vowed to stop meeting like this, a tired Cessna 182 jump plane came in low out of the blackening sky, and dipped a wing to Sandy's final home.

JJ Johnson D-18218
West Point, VA
July 24, 1998