Always On My Mind

Patricia M. Fagan of Toms River, New Jersey, died in the attack on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.

Patricia was an insurance adjuster for the Aon Corp. She was only 55 years old.

I stood in the window of my office on 14th Street and watched that murderous and despicable attack. I held my co-worker, Dineen’s, hand as we watched her father die. He was the manager of the television transmission facility on the towers.

Obituaries do not even begin to describe the terrible wound left by the loss of a good Christian woman like Patricia, but here are a few words from her profile in the New York Times, that attempt to describe her:

Patricia Fagan was a “classic gabber,” said her sister, Eileen. She could not pick up dinner rolls at the store without striking up a conversation about the clerk’s mother’s arthritis. Or board the bus from Toms River to Lower Manhattan, where she was an insurance claims officer with Aon, without chatting with the drivers. Or check an insurance claim without finding out, for instance, about the weather or the claimant’s children's schools.

As a result just about everybody in Toms River, where she grew up, knew her — the tall, exceptionally slender woman of 55 who had a word, or several, with everybody and never forgot a name. The official Saturday night greeter at St. Joseph’s Roman Catholic Church. (A volunteer job, said Eileen Fagan, that fit her sister perfectly.) After her death, letters from numerous insurance clients began to arrive: “I never met Pat,” they all wrote. “I only knew her from business calls. But I feel like we’ve been friends for years.”

I was a witness to your death, Patricia. I prayed for you on that day as I watched my fellow New Yorkers suffering and dying, and I’ve been praying for you every day since. From the window of my office, my co-workers and I watched desperate souls jump to their deaths.

God bless you, Patricia. I hope that your family has found peace.

Comments

[Eric]

... thank you for this.. it is a wonderful tribute...