The epiphany for Jan Brown-Lohr came as she stood in a cornfield, trying to block a frantic mother from running back into a burning airplane to find her 22-month-old son.

Moments before the DC-10 catapulted across a runway in Sioux City, Iowa, in 1989 and killed 112 people on board, Brown-Lohr did what she had been trained as a flight attendant to do: She told parents to wrap their small children in blankets, pad them with pillows, place them on the floor and hold them down with their hands or feet.

For children sitting on their parents' laps, it is considered the best protection. Sylvia Tsao did what she was told but lost her grip on her son, Evan, who was found dead in the wreckage of United Airlines Flight 232.

Tsao blamed Brown-Lohr.

"You told me to put my baby on the floor, and I did," Tsao said to Brown-Lohr. "And now he's gone."

Brown-Lohr, who lives in Schaumburg, has been haunted by what happened, has become an ardent advocate for child-safety seats on planes. She has lobbied Congress, gathered signatures from flight attendants and appeared on national news programs.

Her next appearance will be Wednesday on a PBS-TV special, titled "Escape! Because Accidents Happen," that explores ways to survive plane disasters.

Brown-Lohr's campaign to protect so-called lap babies has had some success. The Federal Aviation Administration is now seriously considering mandating safety seats for children under age 2 and could make a decision as soon as next summer.

Before deciding, federal officials are studying whether to require safety seats designed specifically for aircraft or to continue letting parents use seats from cars, many of which are approved for planes.

A stumbling block to the seat requirement is the airline industry's fear that parents will turn to vehicle travel more because a child-seat law would require guardians to buy separate tickets for all children.

Commercial airlines, including American and United, knowing that statistically it is safer to fly than drive, are trying to combat the added expense by offering discounted fares for infants and toddlers whose parents want them secured. The airlines have stopped short of taking a stance on a mandate for safety seats until the FAA outlines design standards for them.

"Before you can deal with any issues, you have to come up with what is effective and what is not effective on a plane," said David A. Fuscus, a spokesman for the Air Transport Association, which represents the nation's big airlines.

"In the meantime, we always urge people to bring their car seats on board and strap (children) in," he said.

"A pet in a pet carrier under the seat is far safer than a child sitting on a lap unrestrained," Brown-Lohr said.

It's not only the child's safety that is at stake. Other passengers could be struck by a child whose parent cannot hold on.

The National Transportation Safety Board cites still another reason for safety seats. An unrestrained child would likely become separated from his or her parents in the chaos of an emergency.

Nora Marshall, deputy chief of the Survival Factors Division of Aviation Safety for the NTSB, said a child could be lost or overlooked in the fire and smoke. She said that happened in the Sioux City crash that killed Evan Tsao.

After the plane came to a stop upside-down, the cabin began to fill with smoke. As survivors scrambled from the wreckage, a passenger who had been sitting near Evan and was searching for him heard a child crying inside a closed overhead bin.

The passenger reached down and rescued the child, who turned out to be another lap baby who had been thrown 15 rows behind her mother's seat.

That child survived. Evan was found dead in the back of the plane.

The cause for safety seats is important enough to Brown-Lohr that she is undaunted by the seemingly slow pace of change. And she vows to keep pushing even though she retired as a flight attendant in July.

Brown-Lohr recalls vivid details, like the palpable tension in the cockpit when the pilots realized they had lost virtually all steering and braking capabilities at 39,000 feet; her dry mouth and the pin-drop silence as she recited the emergency procedures to a cabin full of terrified passengers; and the bone-shattering impact that left her wondering how her body had stayed intact; the roller-coaster ride as the plane cartwheeled and landed upside-down; the elderly couple she firmly but gently hurried along so others could escape the burning plane; and the thick black smoke that eventually forced Lohr to flee.

Brown-Lohr suffered second- and third-degree burns and counts herself lucky to have been among the 184 who survived.

"I guess it wasn't my time. I still had things to do," said Brown-Lohr. "I guess someone had to be Evan's voice."