"My Whole Family Is Gone"

By KAREN ARAIZA

Updated 9:36 AM EST, Mon, Nov 16, 2009

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NBCPhiladelphia.com

Valerie Lazowski lost her husband and her son in a plane crash Saturday in Cape May County.

"Now my whole family is gone," Valerie told The Press of Atlantic City.

Her husband, Thaddeus, who had a reputation as a meticulous pilot, was eager to fly his Piper Arrow on after waiting out three days of bad weather. She dropped her husband and their only son, also named Thaddeus, off at Woodbine Municipal Airport around 11 a.m. They were headed to a hunting trip in Indiana.

"It had opened up a little bit,” Valerie said. "He was checking weather reports all day long, checking online to make sure the weather wasn’t going to change. If he couldn’t make it through the clouds to blue, he told me he was going to come back. I guess that’s what he was doing, coming back. . . .I don’t know what happened."

Lazowski's plane went down about two miles from the airport in a wooded area. Valerie's husband, 53, and only child, 12, were pronounced dead at the scene.

Overcast conditions may have played a role in the accident. A friend of Lazowski's said Sunday that he was not trained to fly in poor conditions.

Faith iss something the family valued, Valerie said Sunday as she looked through family photographs.

"I want to know who God is," her son wrote just last week in a school paper. "Sometimes I feel like he is far away."

"I know now that Jesus is real,” Valerie said. "But now, more than ever, I have questions for him. At least Thaddeus is getting the answers."