Weather Kept Woman Off Doomed Plane

They were just a routine fluke of the weather, the storms that ripped through the Midwest on Wednesday afternoon, grounding Eileen Rence in Chicago for a few hours longer than she was supposed to be there.

That was enough to keep her from making her connection at Kennedy International Airport in New York City, and TWA Flight 800 left for Paris without her.

Rence, 61, missed the plane by minutes - a blink in time that turned out to be the difference between life and death.

Rence lives in Appleton, Wis., where she teaches English as a second language. She said her friends and relatives had been calling her all Thursday morning to hear her story.

“They want to make sure I’m really here.”

She said that she had not realized the significance of arriving late until she called a friend in Wisconsin to say she had missed her flight to Paris.

“Oh,” her friend blurted out, “that exploded over Long Island.”