Every year or two, he took trips out of the country with his wife. When she died in 1996, he recruited his daughter, Cathie Kershaw.
In late July 2003, Pantano treated her and two of his great-grandchildren to an Alaskan cruise.
It would be his last.
After dinner and a show, the 87-year-old Pantano became ill aboard the Legend of the Seas. Doctors stabilized his condition in the ship’s infirmary.
“They certainly took good care of him,” Kershaw said. “They did the best they could.”
Once in port, Pantano was rushed by ambulance to an emergency clinic in Seward and then transferred by helicopter to an Anchorage hospital.
He died later in the week of kidney and heart failure.
“I thought it would be a couple days and we’d be going home,” Kershaw recalled. “Going on a cruise and having him die was the last thing I thought would ever happen.”
But vacations sometimes end suddenly and sadly with the natural death of a family member while traveling on a ship or airplane.
The International Council of Cruise Lines, an industry trade association representing 16 major passenger ship companies, does not keep tabs on how many people become ill or die while at sea. Neither does a major airline like Delta, which flies out of Daytona Beach, and has 750,000 flights worldwide a year.
“It definitely happens,” said Anthony Black, a Delta spokesman in Atlanta. “But there’s not a running statistic.”
How a death is handled depends on the laws of the country and the deceased individual’s circumstances.
“Were they alone or with people? What part of the journey were they on? Were they connecting or going home?” Black said. “The goal of the airline is to contact a family member as soon as possible. Quite often, someone is waiting at the (airport) and would inquire if someone didn’t arrive.”
Because of the length of most cruises, medical care is available for passengers on ships, no matter what flag the ship flies.
The International Council of Cruise Lines requires ships to provide emergency medical care, stabilize and provide “reasonable diagnostic and therapeutic intervention” and evacuate seriously ill or injured passengers, when necessary, as quickly as possible — sometimes by helicopter.
Many shipboard doctors are members of the American College of Emergency Physicians.
Christine Fischer, a spokeswoman for the cruise-line organization, said an American embassy sometimes helps coordinate the return home of a body.
“Or they can be left on board,” she said for the duration of the cruise. “Newer ships have a morgue.”
Brad Hassell, a Daytona Beach attorney, said laws on the high seas are complex and date back a thousand years. He added, however, that, when a ship enters a nation’s territorial waters, those laws apply, and the procedure for handling a body might differ.
“Most cruises are close to big ports,” he said. “So there shouldn’t be a problem handling a medical emergency.”
Joseph Cervone, 59, of Palm Coast lost his father in 1981 while on vacation in the Dominican Republic. Father and son were at opposite ends of a hotel craps table when the elder Cervone, who had just turned 65, collapsed and died of a massive heart attack.
“We were on vacation, having a great time,” he said. “No one thinks about someone dying.”
The hotel made all the arrangements for taking the body off the island. A cousin, who’s a lawyer, went along to the funeral home.
Cervone, living then in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., said his father’s body, sealed in a casket, arrived by plane a few days after the family.
“Everything went smoothly. We were fortunate,” Cervone said. “We’ve heard of instances when the body’s not back for 1 1/2 weeks. You hear of horror stories.”
Joe Abitante, a Palm Coast travel agent at Kelly’s World of Travel, said he hasn’t booked a trip on which he heard of a client dying. But a friend of his was on a cruise in the Bahamas when someone in the group died of a heart attack.
“Fortunately, they were in port,” he said. “The undertaker here had to deal with the undertaker there. The law in the Bahamas required that he had to be embalmed.”
The financial toll on families can be almost as bad as the emotional toll.
That’s why Abitante recommends that people, especially older people, buy travel insurance that usually costs less than $200. It covers problems as diverse as missing a ship to losing a life.
Cathie Kershaw bought travel insurance for her father before leaving for Alaska.
“He said to me, ‘Why get it? If you want me to get it, you pay for it.’ “
She did.
The coverage cost $183 and saved her thousands of dollars in medical, funeral home and travel bills, some of which Kershaw had to pay up front by credit card and was later reimbursed.
“I can’t say I regret (going). We had had a great time,” she said. “My father died doing what he loved to do most, traveling.”
By RAY WEISS, Staff Writer
The Daytona Beach News-Journal
ray.weiss@news-jrnl.com
