|
|
||
For each of the groups working to erect a memorial to the people killed at the Pentagon on Sept. 11, the effort is personal. Date published: 9/7/2003 By PAMELA GOULD ROSEMARY DILLARD was sitting in a managers meeting at Reagan Washington National Airport when she heard screams coming from a frequent-fliers lounge. The American Airlines flight-crew manager raced into the Admiral's Club to investigate and saw newscasts showing a jetliner strike the south tower of the World Trade Center. "One person said it was Flight 77--one of our crew," Dillard recalled. "I said, 'It can't be 77. I just put Eddie on that plane.'" Nearly two years later, images of Sept. 11, 2001, are still vivid in Dillard's memory. Tears immediately flow as she recalls the morning she lost her husband of 15 years and the four flight attendants she'd gotten to know since relocating from Seattle seven months earlier to manage American's crews out of the three Washington-area airports. The pain remains fresh, the reality still difficult to grasp. She still cannot part with her husband's belongings and each day her mind slips into denial, thinking he'll walk through the door of their Alexandria home. But Dillard, 56, has not let the pain consume her life. From the start, she has been part of the families' steering committee for a memorial to the 184 men, women and children killed when terrorists crashed American Airlines Flight 77 into the nation's defense headquarters. She is now vice president of the Pentagon Memorial Fund Inc., a tax-exempt, nonprofit corporation created to raise $20 million--$11.6 million to pay for the memorial and the rest to cover long-term maintenance of the site designed to help the nation reflect on the events of that day and remember those who were killed. When a contract was signed Aug. 15 with the firm that will fine-tune the design and build the memorial, Dillard was at the Pentagon, representing the families who had lost loved ones. "This means an awful lot to us," she said that day. "We don't consider ourselves victims because just as our lives changed, everyone's lives changed." The Pentagon Memorial could be finished as early as spring 2005, but whether it will hinges to a large degree on funding. Just $320,000 has been raised so far, with $1.5 million needed to begin the first major phase of the project, according to Jim Laychak, president of the Pentagon Memorial Fund Inc. and brother of David Laychak, one of the civilian employees killed that day.
1. Be respectful. No personal attacks.
|
|
|||||||||||||
