MIDDLETOWN – Middletown High graduate Andy Baer recently marked one year since the “worst day of my life.”
His wife Justina and 12-year-old daughter Brielle died on January 29, 2025, in a plane crash over the Potomac River near Washington, DC.
“We miss them terribly,” he said Monday from his daughter’s room in Virginia, where he himself goes “to the ground.” “We’re trying to live life the way they want.”
Brielle would have turned 14 on January 18th.
Baer, whose parents still live in Middletown, moved to Virginia in 2003 after graduating from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The incident involved a US Army Black Hawk helicopter manufactured by Connecticut-based Sikorsky and a passenger jet near Ronald Reagan National Airport.
Flight 5342 was carrying 60 passengers, including four crew members and the American figure skater, coach and family members. There were three people on the helicopter.
Brielle was an excellent ice skater, her father said. He and his mother were returning from Wichita, Kansas, where he competed in the National High Performance Development Camp.
It was “her dream of a lifetime, she was at the top level of advancement in the country for the figure skating level,” Baer added.
That day, he and his now 7-year-old son Callen were waiting in a parking lot near the airport hoping for a plane to land around 9 p.m. It was cold outside, he recalled.
His wife texted him three minutes before the crash saying they were about to land.
His subsequent messages didn’t go through, Baer explained, so they went inside. A short time later, he saw “a parade of fire trucks and emergency lights flashing. My heart sank a little.”
Baer’s neighbor, an air traffic controller, wasn’t working that night but he called her.
“She confirmed that her plane was involved in an accident,” he said.
That’s when he told Callen that two people had died.
“We cried together for 20 minutes,” he said. “I got him in the front seat and held him. I started to shut down and go into shock.”
DC homicide detectives were at the baggage claim, along with the victim’s family members, he continued.
“That’s how I figured everything out,” Beyer said. “It was a really, really terrible night.”
Justina Baer worked as a registered nurse in the emergency room at Fairfax Hospital. Beyer is a computer programmer.
This is not the first time that the family is going through very difficult times. At six months old, Brielle was diagnosed with neuroblastoma, a cancer of the nerve cells.
She underwent surgery at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City that lasted more than seven hours and was placed on a ventilator in the ICU, Beyer said.
“There was a residual tumor that they couldn’t cut all the way through because it was attached to her spine,” he said, adding that she was resistant to cancer treatment.
Brielle suffered nerve damage from the surgery, he added.
“The fact that she was in figure skating is just a testament to how resilient and determined she was,” he said. “As a child, she was bright and bubbly and precocious.”
She was very advanced for her age, Beyer said.
“At 1 year old, he had over 100 words by his first birthday,” he said. “She was reading chapter books by about age 4. She was exceptional in school.”
Brielle “had a maturity well beyond her years,” he said. “A month before she died, she told me what kind of mother she wanted to be.”
Last July would have been the couple’s 15th wedding anniversary, Beyer said.
“She was incredibly strong and resilient,” he said of his wife. “When we went through the cancer journey with Brielle, we knew what was important in life.”
Both made sure their children were always loved, he said.
“We both sacrificed a lot to compete in elite figure skating,” he said. “It demands a lot of a family: financially, time, emotionally, all of it, and she was a constant, supportive presence as part of that. We both knew what we were giving up.”
Beyer and Kallen have received tremendous support from family, friends, the school community and others, he said.
“He needs continuity of things like play dates, so a lot of people have stepped up in that regard,” Beyer said. “He’s thriving in that aspect.”
Callen “has really big emotions in school,” because “he has to focus,” Baer explained. It has been a great help to maintain her routine.
“When you try to calm down your body and everything, that’s when grief can really come to the surface,” Beyer said. “He’s had a lot of challenges. It’s been really traumatic for him.”
Every evening, father and son look at photos and watch videos of happy times.
“We try to remember them and talk about what we’re feeling,” Beyer said. “Those are just some of the ways we’re dealing with it.”
Baer has a tattoo of the initials his wife used in his signature, and the image of Brielle on his arm is based on a photo of him doing the very difficult Bielman spin, where a skater spins on a blade while holding their other leg above their head.
“It looks almost exactly like her,” he said.
The family visited the airport Thursday, spent some time reflecting, then took an emotional boat ride down the river to the crash site, Beyer said.
“It was really meaningful,” he said. “It was also really overwhelming. I’m glad I did it.”
In the meantime, life goes on, Beyer said.
“They left us one thing,” he said. “They left a legacy that I love and Callen wants to continue.”
This article was originally published ‘They left a legacy of love’: Connecticut native reflects after plane crash kills wife, daughter.
