Georgia: The Cherry Orchard

Into a cherry orchard in France, not far from Paris' Orly Airport, walked a grey-haired man, Ivan Allen Jr., the mayor of Atlanta, Ga. Before him lay the charred debris of an Air France 707 jetliner.

Through the grey, smoke-stained wreckage he poked. "I recognize that tie," he said. "And that dress. That's Bob Pe-gram's tie, and that dress belonged to his wife Nancy." Years before, as a youth on his first date, Allen had taken Nancy out. He moved on. Here was a pair of children's wooden Dutch shoes, there a few color slides of castles in Germany, some gay apparel, a brochure about Strat-'ford-on-Avon, a movie camera, a green Michelin guide to Paris, a little girl's dress, picture postcards from Florence, a half-burned evening slipper. "I knew nearly every one of them," said the mayor of Atlanta. "I went to school with some of them. I was in business with others. I was in love with some of the ladies when they were girls."

Less than 24 hours earlier, the chartered jet was roaring down the Orly runway on takeoff. Unaccountably, it failed to lift. The pilot jammed down on the brakes, threw the powerful engines into reverse thrust. But the speed and momentum were too great. The plane rocketed ahead, plowed through a fence, grazed a house, and smashed to pieces in a fiery cloud, killing eight French crew members and 122 passengers. Miraculously, two stewardesses were thrown clear.

One of the passengers was a Frenchman.

All the rest were from Georgia, most of them Atlantans. Most were members of the Atlanta Art Association, which sponsored their tour through Europe's ancient citadels of art. They were the leaders of Atlanta's cultural life, and they feasted their senses at the Louvre, at St. Peter's and St. Mark's, at the Tate and the Uffizi Gallery and the Doges Palace. They had dined on the Via Veneto and in Maxim's.

And after nearly a month, they had assembled for their return trip at Orly with their mementoes and pictures and memories. Now they were dead.