On the second floor, he visits ticket agents and the USO Center staff and visitors, among others. Then, the red side, and then, the blue side, always offering something important to anyone who needs it.

“Spiritual support,” he said.

It’s his duty as an airport chaplain, a volunteer position, a role that felt right for him for a reason.

“I had some experience with tragedies at the airport,” he said.

Receiving Tragic News

On January 13, 1982, Krzanowski, who has a doctorate in pharmacology and helped start the University of South Florida’s medical school, gave a talk in St. Petersburg on some of his research.

That afternoon, his brother and sister-in-law and their two children boarded Air Florida Flight 90 in Washington, D.C., bound for Fort Lauderdale, with a stopover in Tampa.

After Krzanowski’s presentation, he had time to stop at Tampa International to greet them.

He waited airside, until he heard an announcement. Everyone waiting for Flight 90 needed to report to the main terminal, he said. As he rode the escalator, a news crew got on behind him. A crew member asked if he was waiting for someone on Flight 90.

That’s how he learned the plane had crashed.

Waiting for More Information

Krzanowski’s science background kept him calm. “Let me find out what’s going on,” he thought.

He learned there were a few survivors. But his brother’s family wasn’t among them. He called his mother, but she already knew, intuitively, that his brother’s family had died.

“God wouldn’t call them any other way [but together],” his mother told him.

His brother, Edward, a Navy physician, was 35. Edward’s wife, Kay, was 34. Their children, David and Christine, were 4 and 2.

Krzanowski didn’t yet know that years later, he would be called to bring comfort to others at the same airport where he needed it.

Becoming an Airport Chaplain

Airports have had chaplains since the 1950s, Krzanowski said, but not all airports have them.

The late Rev. Shields Moore started the Tampa Interfaith Chaplaincy Program at the airport in 1998. Krzanowski, who was ordained to the diaconate in 1987 and is assigned to Most Holy Redeemer Parish in Tampa, joined the program in 2012.

Airport chaplains are trained to provide disaster relief in case there’s a crash, but “we hope we don’t have to do that,” Krzanowski said. Their primary responsibility is to bring “comfort to travelers and airport employees.”

He learned how to do that in part from experiences he had after his brother’s death.

“When people would say to me after the Air Florida crash ‘Is there anything I can do?’, I would say, ‘You just did,’” he said. “You care. That means a lot to people that somebody cares.”

And it’s what the airport chaplains want the people they meet to know.

The Biggest ‘Church’ in the Diocese

The airport chaplains have “100,000 opportunities a day for ministry,” Krzanowski said.

Cliff Barteaux, the program’s executive chaplain and a parishioner of St. Timothy Parish in Lutz, compares the airport to a small town.

Krzanowski calls it “the biggest ‘church’ in the diocese,” with 10,000 employees and 23 million passengers passing through annually.

If they want to talk, they can ask to see a chaplain.

“On any given day, we talk to people who have had deaths of family members, deaths of friends, people who are in the hospital,” Barteaux said. “We’ve had some people pass away on a plane, people pass away in the airport.”

Sometimes, an airport employee dies, and a chaplain will facilitate a celebration of life for the person’s co-workers, said Krzanowski.

Once, Barteaux said, dozens of members of a single family flew to Tampa for a cruise, but one of them passed away in flight. Her family filled the airport’s chapel, and he sat with them.

But supporting bereaved passengers or people who’ve witnessed deaths isn’t an everyday task.

Sharing God’s Love — And Lollipops

Deacon Jim Paterson, assigned to All Saints Parish in Clearwater, is another of the airport’s chaplains. When he’s on his way to the airport, he prays.

“Lord, help me be your face to those who might need help,” he said, “and let me see your face in all those I come in contact with.”

It prepares him for what the chaplains do most often: chat with airport employees, guide lost passengers, and collect prayer requests. They also hand out lollipops, which breaks the ice.

After that, the chaplains find that some of the people they encounter at the airport just need to “tell you their story,” Krzanowski said.

“I sometimes encounter passengers who are nervous, anxious, or unsure about travel, and I simply walk with them — a ministry of presence.”

The chaplains are happy to listen.

“I can’t change the problems, but I can let you know that I care, and God loves you,” Krzanowski said. “And you can always depend on that.”