A Good Life, Mourners Say Of Jet Victim

With her Bible and favorite childhood teddy bear and a suitcase bulging with Christmas gifts for family and friends, Kesha Weedon boarded Pan Am Flight 103 in London, exhilarated by the experiences of the semester she had spent there.

"We didn't know then that they were her last three months, but they were her best," Ayesha Wilson, a Syracuse University senior who roomed with Weedon in London, told mourners yesterday at Weedon's funeral. "She lived those last months fully and well. She loved you all."

Weedon's funeral at the Shiloh Baptist Church, 2226 Seventh Ave. in Washington Heights, was the latest in the New York area for victims of the doomed flight destroyed in mid-air by a terrorist bomb only days before Christmas. And for Weedon's mother and father their heartbreak was almost unbearable. Their oldest son, Marlon, a Harvard University medical school student, was killed three years ago in a car crash over spring break.

At the funeral, one of Weedon's aunts, Gloria Guyce, said, "There are very few times you have only all good things to say about someone, but that someone was Kesha." More than 200 family members and friends gathered to say farewell to the 20-year-old Syracuse University junior who planned a career in social work helping troubled children and families. Weedon had just completed the university's Social Work Program Abroad program.

"If there is one thing people should remember Kesha for, it was her incredible generosity . . . She was generous not only with material things, but especially of herself. She gave of herself all the time," Wilson said. Everywhere she traveled, she picked up special gifts for her family and friends so they would be able to share the excitement of her semester abroad, Wilson said. "There was at least one suitcase filled with gifts that she took aboard that plane," said Wilson, who helped Kesha pack and accompanied her to the airport. At the last minute, Wilson decided to spend Christmas with family friends in London. A friend called her with news of the crash at 3 a.m., just as Wilson got home from her job at a disco. "I felt dead inside. Then I started to remember all the other friends on that flight. I kept calling Pan Am, one name at a time, and they kept confirming that each person had been aboard. Thirty-five friends," she said.

Among them was Kesha's special friend from college, Timothy Johnson, of New Jersey, who had flown over for a visit and was accompanying her back to New York.

Ministers, teachers and friends described Weedon as a gifted and caring woman. She played the violin in the university orchestra, sang alto in church and school choirs, and participated in Youth for Christ activities. Her London adviser, Darrell Slover, said Weedon distinguished herself and "was becoming all that she could be. We are going to miss that very lovely and caring young woman." Her life, though short, served as an example to all youth, said the Rev. Robert Bullock in his eulogy. "She left a challenge for all of us, young and old. We thank God she came this way and for the 20 years this fine young woman was among us," he said.

Weedon's father, Lee Weedon, is a retired mechanical engineer. Her mother, Barbara Matthews-Weedon, worked two jobs as a telephone operator for years to make sure her 10 children could go to college. "You come out of hard times and poverty, and you work so hard for your children," said Barbara Weedon. "I got up and did it gladly so they could do well for themselves and do good in the world. I don't understand. I just hope that people will look at this and pray . . . pray that there will be peace somewhere in the world."

Katherine Foran, A Good Life, Mourners Say Of Jet Victim., 01-08-1989, pp 04.