Doug Lane sat in the small sewing studio, surrounded by a half-finished quilt and stacks of fabric. 

A sewing machine was nearby. A table with more fabric. A couple of chairs. A few framed photographs. 

The sewing studio — a converted shed located at the edge of the Lane’s property — was Christine’s space. She loved sewing and quilting and so many other crafts. 

“The sewing was something that her mother taught her early in life,” Doug said. “She kind of took it and ran with it in a bunch of different directions. She used to make handmade handbags…”

Doug looked around the studio.

“This was a quilt she was working on when she passed away,” he said.

The large, brightly-colored piece covered the wall in the back corner of the studio, untouched since late January when Doug’s wife Christine, their 16-year-old son Spencer, and 65 other people died in a plane crash outside of Reagan National Airport in Washington, D.C. 

Christine and Spencer were passengers on a jet that collided with an Army helicopter on Wednesday night, Jan. 29 — everyone aboard the plane and the helicopter was killed. 

Christine and Spencer were traveling home from Kansas, where Spencer had been participating in the U.S. Figure Skating National Development camp. Despite starting figure skating just three years ago, Spencer was progressing rapidly and aspired to skate for the U.S. National team. 

“I’m the proud father,” said Doug. “I’m going to say my kid is amazing. But what he did, there was nobody else that did what he did. Three years and he’s at the development camp for USA.”

Late last month, Doug Lane sat down with the Barrington Times and shared memories of Christine and Spencer. 

Glowing 

Christine Lane was a creative person. Creative and friendly, said Doug. She loved people and helped with a dog rescue. She was quick to smile and happy to help others. 

“She was just a very glowing and friendly and happy person that had a lot of passions in life. From a personality standpoint, she was the type of person that just connected with people very easily. She wasn’t overly extroverted or gregarious, but she just had this ability… to become fast friends with people.

“So, she had all of these wonderful friends. She had creative friends that she talked to and did things with in the sewing, knitting creative realm. But she also had her friends who were part of Rhode Home Rescue that she would go see and help out with Foster dogs. 

“She had her friends up at the skating rink. I would go up and be silently in the corner shooting videos, and she’s playing Magic the Gathering card games with the club management. She just had this ability to become more than an acquaintance with people, especially if they were people who had a shared interest … she didn’t know anything about Magic the Gathering, but she said ‘Oh, that looks fun. Tell me more about that.’ And the next thing you know I start seeing credit card charges for all the card sets.”

‘It’ factor

The Lane family traveled to South Korea to adopt Spencer when he was nine months old, and it did not take long for them to realize he was very special. 

“From the moment we met him, he just had this special ability, even more than Christine, of just connecting with people. 

“We would take him, even just as a toddler, to a restaurant or something, and we’d walk in the door — and obviously he was a cute little South Korean kid with curly hair, which is kind of uncommon — so we would go into restaurants and all eyes would go to him. We would eat our dinner and the whole time he would be making faces at people and stuff. By the end, we’d pay our bill and walk out the door and the whole restaurant would just be like ‘Bye Spencer!’ And then we’d go back and they would be like ‘Oh, Spencer’s back!’

“He just had that ‘It’ factor that some people have.

“From an athletic standpoint, from when he was very, very young, it was clear he had amazing athletic ability. Like he could always lift his bodyweight and climb things. It was kind of terrifying at times (for his parents). 

He always had this ability to control his body. He was later diagnosed with ADHD… Obviously there’s some downsides to ADHD, but I think it gave his brain this ability to just do things that other people can’t do.”

Graphic designer

Christine Lane studied to be a graphic designer, Doug said, adding that she attended Syracuse University. After college, she worked at advertising agencies in Boston, and eventually became a freelance graphic designer. 

“When we started our family, she transitioned to being a full-time mom for a while, but when she did that instead of creating signage for Dunkin Donuts or something, she would try knew things… for example, we became friendly with many other adoptive families when we were going through that process, so she would work with them to create announcement cards or birthday invitations, things like that. She would use her graphic design skills to create the card, and she knew how to format things for printing.

“She would give her friends specially designed keepsakes. She would also try new things. She purchased a kiln and for a while she was making stained glass. She would melt glass in interesting ways. 

“When we were getting married, most people go to the stationery store, but she designed our wedding invitations. And they weren’t just printed on a card. They were like a level of paper, a level of different paper, a piece of translucent velum that was hand-grommeted together with the paper and had straw tied around it… She had a soap-making phase where she was making soap, and all our wedding guests would get bundles of hand-made soap.

“I thought it was a little intense. For me, when I met her, I’m just a regular guy. I had a job and on the weekend I’d just hang around and watch basketball or whatever. She really unlocked in me this realization that ‘Oh, you can work hard during the week, but you can actively chase your hobbies and passions.’ That really changed me for the better. 

“Even now, in the aftermath of what happened, my coping mechanism is I just stay active and I build a giant to-do list every day… There are two paths I could take here. One is I could lay in bed and stare at the ceiling. The other is I can jump out of bed and run as fast as I can and do as much as I can to improve things, both for myself and for the people around me. That coping mechanism is a direct link to her, I think.”

Less conventional

Spencer Lane was great at sports. He just did not love the traditional ones, said Doug. 

“I took him to soccer. He played one game and was amazing and the crowd was eating out of the palm of his hand. And then he walked off and said ‘I’m never doing that again.’ So eventually he started to do less conventional things. We took him to a parkour gym in Fall River and he thrived at that. He would jump across the room. He did really well with that, enjoyed that… 

“I found this place in East Greenwich that is an aerial arts studio. So I signed him up for that. He was amazing at that. He would climb up to the rafters … and the silks were hanging from the rafters… and he would wrap himself in them. And then he would let go and tumble down in these interesting ways and everybody watching would gasp.

“December 2021 was the tree lighting at the skating rink (in Providence) when it (skating) clicked. In January 2022, that was when we started going to ‘Learn To Skate’ at Schneider Arena at PC. The sessions run for 4 to 6 weeks. For badge one, you have to skate in a circle. He did one session and they gave him the stack of badges and told him go find a private coach. 

“He started doing the private lessons. Obviously he advanced very quickly and was obsessed and even between lessons, he wanted to go to Legion Way or go to Providence. He started doing jumps with his coach's help and a lot of just sheer determination. 

“He would go in the garage and just do off-ice jumps. I would hear him crash into the trash barrels. If you went back on his social media, you could find videos of him crashing. 

“He had this athleticism that was advancing him faster than his skills, really. 

“So he would go to Warwick and after his lesson, he would just jump. The coach would teach him the basics that he was supposed to be doing and then he would stay for an hour and just be slamming repeatedly into the ice because he just wanted to do the jumps.”

Making it work

The world of competitive figure skating can become quite expensive, said Doug. The private coaching, the ice time, the $2,000 skates. But Doug and Christine were determined to help Spencer chase his dream. 

“It was a struggle but we were making it work. But she (Christine) wanted to contribute… So late last year she is like ‘Hey, you know what? I’m going to go get my real estate license so I can help with this.’ She went through all the classes, took the tests and everything … the woman that was our real estate agent worked at Residential, and was kind of mentoring her through the process. She literally just started in the first week of January and loved it. She was just getting into it. She was really excited, and I was excited for her.

“She had the home decor passion where I think she would be really helpful to families. I think she would have been amazing at it.”

Serious about skating 

Spencer progressed very quickly in his figure skating jumps, despite having only started three years ago. In an effort to develop some of the needed skills, he took a full-year break from competing to best prepare himself for a run at the National team. But, Doug said, he still needed to complete a series of qualifying tests.

“We had to crank through the tests…he was skating at a level of somebody that was basically like a Triple A baseball player but he had the test level of T-ball…He could do the jumps, but he couldn't do the stuff you learn when you're six. He struggled with that sometimes. So it was not always a given that he was going to pass the tests. By the time the season was starting, he had achieved what's called juvenile, which is still like little kids. But he was able to then compete a level up.”

Top four

By the end of 2024, Spencer had won a series of events and had finished the necessary testing. In order to qualify for the 2024 U.S. Figure Skating National Development camp, he needed to finish top-four in the series. 

“He did amazing. He got invited to camp … and then he was also invited to a special third day which was for the best of the best. So that's where he was on the day he left.

“The somewhat sad part of the story is that when we were in Lake Placid, he was doing the practice ice before the competitions and I was with him at the practice ice and he was doing fine, and then Christine and Milo (Spencer’s brother) came in and so all of a sudden he just couldn't do anything anymore. He was falling and he was getting stressed out and after that he didn't want Christine to come to his competitions anymore. 

“She was very immersed in his training and she was up in Boston with him all the time, but she did not go to any of his competitions.

“So, all three warm-up competitions and the three NQS (National Qualifying Series) events and sectionals, I took him and she did not go to any of those. I recorded them all and she watched the videos immediately after, but she was not present.

“When (the National Development) camp came up, we were kind of talking … there were some competitive elements but it's not a competition. Yeah, it really was a flip of a coin for which one of us was on the plane. 

“I guess I can take some solace in the fact that it was an amazing week, I think, for both of them.

“They had parent programming as well, so she wasn't just sitting in the stands. She was actually going through (the programming) like sports psychologists and nutrition, and all kinds of different parent programming and meeting a lot of the U.S. Figure Skating people. She's friends with people from the Skating Club of Boston, they were there as well and she was hanging out in their little booth.

“And Spencer was just in heaven, you know… I mean if it had happened on the way there, it would have been… I mean it was devastating, but it’s comforting that his last week was just doing that.”