For Mari-Rae

I remember a lot from the week Sept 11th, 2001.  My roommate screaming from the living room when the second plane hit.  The WFAA helicopter that buzzed our apartment building immediately afterward and scared us to death.  Walking out into the Blockbuster corporate offices lobby from the stairwell and seeing it filled with over 100 people watching a bank of TVs.  And I remember being in my bathroom that Friday night, getting ready to go out,when my friend Beth called to tell me that Mari-Rae had been on the plane that crashed into the Pentagon.

Mari-Rae and Beth had worked together years before and I knew Mari-Rae through Beth.  Together we were all part of an extended social group, until Mari-Rae left Dallas for law school in Colorado and others went their own ways too.  Mari-Rae was fun to hang out with, but we were never close.  She was extremely outspoken about her views and opinions and at times she could be hard to take.  Even those who loved her dearly, her parents, admitted in interviews after 9/11 that she was stubborn and rubbed people the wrong way at times.  More importantly though, her heart was usually in the right place and you had to admire how the ways she annoyed you made her a champion for the people and ideals that she believed in.  And those she frequently championed were the disenfranchised, the forgotten, the ones who were written off by the rest of the world.

She was on her way to be that champion for the UC-Santa Barbara women's gymnastics team on the morning of 9/11.  The program was in danger of being cut in the next year and she was on her way to California to take over as their head coach and save it.  Mari-Rae left behind a lucrative law career in D.C. for this new adventure and her first love, gymnastics.  Her optimism shows in the subject line of the last email she sent family and friends, "New Job New City New State New Life".

I've always imagined her fighting to the end that morning.  Maybe trying to organize the other passengers or working out a strategy to fight back.  To sit back and accept what was coming or the situation at hand was not the Mari-Rae way.   


So here we are 10 years later and as always happens this time of year, I've been thinking of her again.  I think the best way to honor her memory is in something I wrote a couple of months ago.  Instead of living each day as it was your last, try this instead:


Treat each person you meet today as if it were their last day.


I think Mari-Rae would appreciate that ideal and in many ways, it represents how she lived her own life and her values in turn.  

Eternal rest grant unto her O Lord, and may the Perpetual Light shine upon her.