The 258 passengers who boarded American Airlines Flight 191 at O’Hare International Airport on May 25, 1979, were traveling for a variety of reasons. Some, who attended work meetings in Chicago, were rushing back to California before Memorial Day weekend. Others were excited to get to Los Angeles — the flight’s terminus — to attend a booksellers convention.

Couples were heading to tropical getaways and a few more were set to surprise loved ones. Just a few minutes after 3 p.m.

, the DC-10 carrying them and 13 members of the San Diego-based crew lost its left engine, which broke away and vaulted over the aircraft’s wing. The plane continued to rise, its wings level, despite the nearly 13,500 pounds suddenly missing from its left side. But as it reached 300 feet, the plane slowed and rolled left until it began to overturn, its nose tipping down.

The aircraft crashed just 31 seconds into its flight. The 271 people aboard the plane and two more on the ground were killed. In an instant several immediate families were gone.

Forty-five years later, Flight 191 remains the deadliest passenger airline accident on U.S. soil.

The victims were a cross-section of America — smart, funny, kind, brave, loving and hardworking. That’s how their family and friends remember them. Each year they gather to celebrate their lost loved ones whose names are inscribed on bricks in a special Flight 191 Memorial at Lake Park in Des Plaines — just down the road from the crash site.

A special.