Gilliam also remembered a prophetic conversation she had with her husband just days before the crash. In a phone call from New Jersey, Scott told her of a traveler's insurance policy he had taken out just before his trip. Don't worry, he assured his wife, the policy was just a precaution, "in case anything ever happens to me."
Edwin Reid was a seasoned business traveler who was returning Friday from a two-day trip to Phoenix. Week-in, week-out, the 38-year-old commercial leasing agent from Palmdale climbed aboard flights as a representative of the Melvin Simon Corp., a company that owns shopping malls through the Western United States. Reid's wife, Lois, figured that he logged more than 20,000 miles a month in the air.
The hours spent aboard planes, however, didn't exempt Reid from a lurking uneasiness about flying, his wife said. It was the commuter flights that concerned him the most.
"We talked about his flying and he knew that commuter planes had a higher rate of accidents," Lois Reid said of her husband of 16 years. "But I don't think he ever thought that something like this could happen."
Reid, an avid hunter and fisherman, made up for his trips away from home by always being playful and loving with his two daughters and son, who range in age from 6 to 8.
"He was extremely kind and affectionate," Lois Reid said Saturday from her home in a Palmdale subdivision. "He was a loving father and husband.
"We had made a lot of plans and had a lot of dreams," Lois Reid said tearfully. "Now they are not the same. I will take everything one day at a time. . . . Right now there are hills and valleys, but we want to remember what a good man my husband was."
Michael Fuller, 30, was Sky-West's station manager in Palmdale. He was returning Friday from a weeklong SkyWest management seminar in Palm Springs. Flight 5569 was to bring him home.
"He was an exemplary individual in every sense of the word," SkyWest spokesman Steve Hart said of Fuller, who began working for SkyWest in May, 1986, in Cedar City, Utah.
Fuller's wife, Karen, 28, saw news of the crash that killed her husband on television Friday night. Her parents immediately drove the 6 1/2 hours from their home in Cedar City to be with their daughter, who is a substitute teacher, and their grandchildren, 23-month-old Dustin and Melissa, age 4.
"I think we've given up flying," Fuller's mother-in-law, Marian Ashdown, said Saturday.
Times staff writer Iris Schneider contributed to this article.
