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Shrewsbury family killed in copter crash in Hawaii Published in the Asbury Park Press 7/24/00By JULIET GREERand PETER EICHENBAUM STAFF WRITERS William John "Jack" Jordan, 51, was a professor of economics
at Seton Hall University, a second lieutenant in the Shrewsbury First Aid
Squad, and a former borough Board of Education president. His wife, Jan
S. Herscovitz, 49, was a board-certified psychiatrist with more than 15
years' experience who had a practice in Little Silver.
Their two children also perished in the crash. Max Jordan,
16, attended Christian Brothers Academy, Lincroft, Middletown, and Lindsey
Jordan, 15, was going to attend Red Bank Regional High School, Little Silver.
As of yesterday, police in Maui and Shrewsbury were still not
releasing the names of the Jordan family members because they had not contacted
the family's next of kin. They were identified through sources close to
the family.
"We're a small community," said former Mayor Bill Kelleher,
who first heard the news yesterday morning at an annual picnic sponsored
by the borough's volunteer fire and first aid squads. "We're touched and
we're hurt."
The pilot who died in the crash was identified as 55-year-old
Larry Kirsch of Hawaii. He was a Vietnam veteran with more than 11,000
hours of flight time and had been with the company, Blue Hawaiian Helicopters,
more than a year, said Patti Chevalier, co-owner of the company.
Tourists Natalie Prince, 14, of Fort Worth, Texas, and Whitney
Wood, 14, of Burleson, Texas, also were killed. The two were best friends
and were on vacation with Prince's family.
The group was taking a 35-minute sightseeing tour of the West
Maui mountains when the helicopter crashed into a steep mountain hillside
at 10:20 a.m. Friday. The crash happened in a remote area of Iao Valley
on the island of Maui. They were riding in a twin-engine AS355 helicopter
owned and operated by Blue Hawaiian, an air-tour company that had had a
perfect safety record since it began operations in 1985.
Rescue crews had difficulty retrieving remains from the dangerous,
wet and slick crash site, which had a slope of about 30 degrees. There
was no place for a helicopter to land during rescue operations yesterday,
so a 10-man crew had to rappel from a helicopter to a ridge, then set new
lines to rappel down the hillside to the crash site.
Investigators from the Federal Aviation Administration and
the National Transportation Safety Board are still determining what caused
the tragedy.
In Shrewsbury, community members were grieving.
Larry Ambrosino, superintendent of Shrewsbury Borough School,
the K-8 school that Lindsey Jordan recently graduated from, described her
as a hard-working child who overcame learning disabilities to achieve a
95 average. At her recent graduation, Lindsey Jordan was given the Tracey
Ann Kearney Friendship Award, the school's highest honor. The award is
named after a child who died of cystic fibrosis and is given to children
for diligence and hard work.
Susan Hickey, who lives across the street from the family,
said that the award is usually given to a "warm, gracious, polite, true
humble individual, which she was," and that Lindsey's classmates last month
overwhelmingly voted to bestow her with the award.
Some of Lindsey's classmates at Shrewsbury Borough School,
Justine Hardie, John Baker and Susan Hickey's child Mave, all 14, clutched
flowers that they intended to leave at the family's doorstep.
By late yesterday afternoon, classmates and other townsfolk
had left behind bouquets and vases of flowers and personal messages.
Susan Hickey described the Jordan-Herscovitz family as "very
civic-minded" and "an extraordinary family unit."
They were also world travelers, having vacationed together
in places including Japan, Thailand, Mexico and Russia, she said. It was
important for them to show their children "how different cultures lived,"
Hickey said. "It was part of their upbringing, since their parents were
doctors and teachers."
Max Jordan also was an honor student and was preparing to enter
his senior year at Christian Brothers this fall.
Brother Daniel Gardner, vice princi-pal at the academy, said
Max Jordan played the saxophone and was a mem-ber of the school jazz band.
"I knew him fairly well," said Gardner. "He was a nice, friendly
kid who had great interest in computers."
Gardner had not known Max Jordan was in Hawaii and learned
of the accident early yesterday when he was contacted by authorities, he
said.
The academy will have its crisis inter-vention team on hand
today for any students or faculty who may need assistance coping with the
loss, he said.
At Seton Hall, co-workers and stu-dents were saddened by the
news of Jack Jordan's passing.
He earned a doctorate in economics in 1977 from the State University
of New York at Albany. He began as an assistant professor at Seton Hall
in 1977 and later became a full profes-sor, said Margaret Horsefield, a
uni-versity spokeswoman.
"Dr. Jordan was a professor who was extremely dedicated to
his craft," said Karen Boroff, acting dean of the uni-versity's Stillman
School of Business, where Jack Jordan worked. "He was a very knowledgeable
teacher who act-ed as a mentor to his students. This is a tremendous loss
to Seton Hall Uni-versity, to our students, and to his colleagues."
Dennis Camporeale, a 1999 Seton Hall graduate who was in Jack
Jor-dan's class, said Jordan made a differ-ence to him as a student because
he was encouraging and supportive.
"He challenged me to learn, and he helped me to really understand
each lesson," Camporeale said.
Jack Jordan was elected to two one-year terms on the Shrewsbury
Board of Education in 1994 and 1995.
Ambrosino said he will meet with school counselors today to
discuss opening Shrewsbury Borough School early this week for grief counseling
for the entire community.
Staff writer Georgia East and The Associated Press contributed to
this story.
Juliet Greer: (732) 922-6000, Ext. 7754, or jgreer@app.com
Published on July 24, 2000
Copyright 1997-2000 IN Jersey.
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