Picture: Alet and Erich Heine with their daughters, Kristen and twins Anje and Melissa.
ALET HEINE (37) was in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, helping her daughters get ready for school when the phone rang. It was the child-minder she’d become close to when she and her husband, Erich (41), lived in Germany some years ago.
“She had heard on the news an Air France plane had disappeared and was worried because she knew Erich was on his way to Europe,” Alet says.
She turned on the TV and struggled not to become hysterical. “I thought the fact there had been no contact with the plane didn’t necessarily mean it had crashed.”
Then there was a knock at the door. A personnel manager from ThyssenKrupp had come to tell Alet that her husband and 227 other passengers on Air France flight 447 were officially missing and probably dead.
“When I saw on TV yesterday how they pulled a section of the aircraft’s tail from the sea and heard today that 41 bodies had already been recovered it was like a dagger through my heart,” she says from Rio.
What is most difficult is to stop hoping. “If there’s someone who can survive a disaster it’s Erich.”
Alet tries not to dwell on Erich’s final moments but believes he would have reached out to others in an emergency. “He would have quickly organised everyone and helped the women and children first. Erich is a natural leader and a naturally good person. His compassion is completely spontaneous.”
Erich was her soulmate and the most wonderful father in the world, she says.
Their daughters, Kristen (6) and twins Anje and Melissa (4), were the most important consideration in everything Erich did. Her priority now is to make the transition to their new home in Somerset West as painless as possible for her children.
Alet stops talking as her emotions threaten to overwhelm her. “Erich would spend every minute he had with our children. He liked people but the love and time he had for his children was extraordinary. What’s most painful for me is that they’ll never know him as I knew him.”
