When Death Wins

Durham, New Hampshire is a very small New England town, close to Portsmouth and the home of the University of New Hampshire. When we lived in that part of the country, I worked at the University bookstore and my husband worked just down the road at a veterinary clinic. The clinic was owned by a woman veterinarian who happened to be married to a professor of history at the University so it was more or less expected that we would all connect at some time.

Being wary that business and friendship can sometimes be a poor mix, we became friendly but in a distanced sort of way. I liked her compassion and love for animals and I enjoyed his humor. They seemed to complement each other nicely and we spent several evenings together over the course of several years. He traveled a good bit, back and forth to publishers and conferences, mostly in New York, but sometimes much further away. He looked every bit the absent minded professor - tall, thin, with silver hair and a salt and pepper beard. He was rarely seen without a stack of books under one arm and his pipe between his teeth. He never came into the bookstore that he didn't stop and speak to me. His students thought the world of him and when he was selected to chair his department no one was surprised. He was a dedicated teacher, an able administrator, a good man with a touch of old world elegance and easy charm. And on the morning of September 11th, 2001, he was on an early morning flight to New York City.

I found out when our local paper began publishing names and pictures of the passengers. Discovering that I actually knew someone who'd been on one of the planes was horrific and devestating, making the unimaginable loss of life personal for me. It didn't bear thinking about then and even now I can't reconcile it with reality, at least not in any comprehensible way. The sheer magnitude of it obscures the individual lives lost. The images are indelible in my mind and I can't even begin to understand what must have been going through the minds of the passengers in their last moments. And that's what I keep coming back to. He was a small town history professor on a routine flight and along with so many thousands of others, he died without warning and without cause. Death may have won that evil morning but I doubt it was proud.