Her Daily News

Two years ago Black Belt Mama wrote a very nice memorial to Ronald Tartaro and I vowed that I would make the same type of dedication to someone else when another September 11th rolled around.

Just this week on Twitter it was said that if we aren’t careful enough to remember it the right way we’ll start seeing 9/11 sales at the local big-box stores and that would be, unfortunate.

It was my final semester of college. I had just begun my senior year and the day was glorious really. I walked from my apartment in Rossyln to the Metro and then through the cool-morning-air-filled streets of Foggy Bottom to class and I remember looking at the sky and thinking that it was just a gorgeous day. I distinctly recall the simpleness of my feelings before it happened.

I was sitting in class when the token GW basketball player walked in and announced with dreadful casualness that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center; his mother lived in New York City and had just called him. That was his excuse for being late to class and really no one believed him. Over the course of the next half hour or so news spread and my teacher actually threw her hands into the air and said “I don’t know what is going on but I can’t teach with this happening,” and with that we left class. I went to my office on campus where I worked and soon learned the whole story.

I recall that it was a particularly frightening and lonely time.

I lived one mile from the Pentagon at the time.

Later that night a good friend of mine from High School who attended another nearby University called me and told me her much older half-sister had been on the plane that hit the Pentagon.

Lisa J. Raines was on American Airlines Flight 77.

I struggle to write this today not because of sadness or pain but because her family was private and they never wanted nation-wide recognition. It wasn’t their style. I fear I am doing them a disservice by writing this today, seven years later, but I doubt they will find it actually.

It is important that we not forget the people whose lives ended on this day seven years ago. I’m not one to say that they are all heros because my patriotism doesn’t extend in that way and none of those 2,996 people wanted to be a HERO on that day.

Project 2,996 strives to remember the lives of each individual and not the terrible, public way they were taken from us.

Lisa Raines was an incredibly dedicated pioneer in her field, working as a Senior Vice President of Government Affairs at Genzyme, a biotechnology company. Her untimely death left an irreplaceable void in the lives of her husband, father, mother, two brothers and sister. Not everyone needs a verbose memorial and Lisa’s family would appreciate a brief tribute.

Thank you for taking the time to read this today and to remember one of the lives that ended too soon, seven years ago today.