Lisa Beamer seems not to have faltered since her husband’s memorable command “Let’s roll!” aboard doomed United Flight 93 made her a national figure.
She stood without tears before President Bush, Congress and the American public. She has traveled the country speaking about her husband, Todd Beamer, who, with other passengers, apparently charged the hijackers and kept the plane from crashing into a populated target.
As the husband refused to wilt in the face of adversity, so has the wife.
There is now a Todd M. Beamer Foundation to help children facing family trauma. And a book: “Let’s Roll: Finding Hope in the Midst of Crisis.”
Above all, there is a new member of the Beamer family. Morgan Kay Beamer was born in January, nearly four months after her father died when Flight 93 crashed in a Pennsylvania field.
“I’ll never be able to forget what happened, but I can’t let it rule my life,” Beamer, 32, said during a recent visit to Chicago. “We have a newborn girl now. And for her, life is just beginning.”
Daniel Pearl was not killed on Sept. 11, but he and his family were victims of the events that followed the attacks. The 38-year-old Wall Street Journal reporter was slain in January in Pakistan after he was abducted while investigating a story on terrorists.
In May, Pearl’s widow, Mariane Pearl, 34, a French-born journalist, gave birth to their son, Adam, in Paris. After Daniel Pearl went missing, his wife described her late husband as a gentle man. “He has never harmed anybody. Instead he has been quite sympathetic to the pain caused to others. Danny and I are both gentle, peace-loving people,” she said last winter prior to the confirmation of his death.
This summer, four men were convicted in Pakistan of Pearl’s kidnapping and slaying.
On Sept. 6 at a baby shower in New York for Sept. 11 widows who gave birth after the attacks, the greatest applause, and the most tears, followed the reading of a letter from Mariane Pearl.
Expressing solidarity with the sad sorority, Pearl encouraged the mothers to fight their despair. “Our shared destiny implies a great deal of loneliness,” she wrote. “To win over terrorism is not to be crushed by sadness and despair. . . . Our role is to preserve life.”
Monica Iken’s name has become synonymous with the kind of deeply personal losses suffered on Sept. 11.
Her husband, Michael, worked as a bond trader on the 84th floor of the South Tower of the World Trade Center. In the first few days after the terrorists attacked, she emerged as something more than a grieving widow. She wanted her husband’s remains so she could come to grips with the reality of his death.
“I need a body bag. Not a finger or a foot. I need a body to bury before I’ll say it’s over,” she said.
His remains have yet to be found.
The hole in the ground where the towers once stood has thus become a sacred place for Iken, who founded September’s Mission, a volunteer organization, with the help of friends. The group, which depends on contributions, is supporting the creation of a memorial park that ties in with whatever redevelopment plan the city eventually approves.
It’s tough standing in the shadow of anyone, but when you stand in the shadow of a fallen hero, you can almost disappear.
Marian Fontana’s husband, New York Fire Lt. Dave Fontana, was killed on Sept. 11 and she has been forced to take on a complicated, demanding role, that of fireman’s widow.
Fontana, 35, is the founder of the 9/11 Widows and Victims’ Family Association and serves on the Family Advisory Committee of the Lower Manhattan Development Corp.
A free-lance writer who lives in Brooklyn with her 6-year-old son, she has told interviewers that the tragedy left her with the feeling she can never be anything more than the widow of Lt. Dave Fontana.
“Sometimes I wish I could walk away from all this, delete all the messages, raise my son and write comedy in peace,” she told The New York Times. In her mind, she told the Times, she pictures her husband alive. “I’ve got all the time in the world to wait for him to come home,” she said.
