Damn that was irritating…
…enough so that I won’t even host the damn thing on my site. I’m warning you. DON’T CLICK THIS LINK unless you have already had something to dull the pain. I’ll never be able to play Half-Life again.
Thanks to Dragon Lady for keeping me up all fucking night with that music in my head.
Damnitall. My site is down again. Twice in the same day. Now that pisses me off.
Back up again. Whatever.
A couple of months ago I ran across the 2996 project and thought that this would be something very nice to be involved in. I am so busy making fun of the news and other stupid people that I don’t give myself much of a chance to look at things emotionally, and this is a good chance.
Brendan Dolan was 37 years old when he died. He was a quarterback in High School and loved sports until the day he died. He graduated from the University of Rochester in 1986. He worked for Carr Futures as a broker and a Senior Vice President. He lived in Glen Rock, New Jersey. He had two small children and a family that loved him very much and I am sure still misses him. He worked on the 92nd floor, two floors below the impact in the North Tower.
Those are the basic facts.
How do I write about someone I have never met?
Did he love his children and wife?
Apparently he did. Since he had to travel a lot, he treasured the time that he spent with his wife and his children. He had been married to his wife Stacey for seven years. She said that he husband was a “terrific” father to their young daughters. “We were kind of thinking of possibly having a third child”, she said.
I dote on my two daughters, and they return the love. I cannot imagine the great loss these two little girls must feel every day.
He would gather friends and family around him on weekends and take charge, always the quarterback, arranging vacations for the entire family, his parents, and siblings.
He told his brother Charles, who is still single: “Forget business. You don’t get it yet. Work will never bring you the kind of satisfaction you’ll have from a family.”
His friends and clients were all very fond of him, and he had a great sense of humor. From what I have read about him, he also treated all of his clients as his friends. He was looked upon as an “icon” by his co-workers.
His cousin, Susan says some really nice things about him in another tribute:
There are few people you meet in this life that are as sincere and easygoing as Brendan Dolan. Growing up, myself, my brothers and my sisters often said, “If there was anybody else in the world I could be like, it would be Brendan.” Brendan had an amazing way with people. He often went out of his way to do things for us. I consider myself blessed to have known Brendan. Brendan was well loved by all of us, and will be very much missed in our lives.
When he got up in the morning and went to read the paper he didn’t turn to the business or news sections. He read the sports page. That seems such a small thing, but it shows that although he was a go-getter in the business, there were more important things in his life than business.
The last that was heard from or about him was when one of his co-workers spoke to his wife about 10:20 AM and confirmed that Brendan was with him. This was just a few minutes before the tower crumbled. 67 Carr Futures employees were there that morning, quite a few of them for a special meeting that had been called.
When his high school class had it’s 20th reunion in 2002, instead of going ahead and getting the party started, they held a memorial mass for Brendan.
Brendan Dolan is also survived by his parents, Mary and Brendan of Crestwood, N.Y.; three brothers, and a sister.
I was working in the office on September 11th, 2001. I remember right after the first plane hit the WTC being worried about my parents. The were living in Arlington at the time, and my dad worked right down the street from the Pentagon. My little brother was also living up there, and he worked in DC at the time, so this was all very real to me. Most of us just stood around the office watching the television, dumbfounded by what we saw.
Most of this is just snippets of stuff that I have found on the Internet, mainly from reading other memorials. I am posting this a couple of days early, since I am going to be out of town this weekend, and it will stay on top until the 11th. I will be sure to light a candle for all of the dead on Monday.
There is a pretty good tribute that I have seen in several different places of the last 102 minutes at the World Trade Center. You can find a copy of it here.
I am updating this again to put a few links to some tributes that I have come across. Obviously I don’t have the time to put links to them all, and they are already there at the project site, but I wanted to link to the sites that I visit on a daily basis, or belong to people I have met. I have also updated the time of this post so that it will stay on top until midnight, as anything I might post today is nowhere near as important as this one.
I do not know her, but I visit Michelle Malkin’s site pretty much daily. Here is her tribute to Giovanna Porras.
Shoe has posted her tribute to Valerie Joan Hanna. I had heard her speaking of Valerie over the weekend and was looking forward to reading it.
RSM has posted his here. I think he had the same problems that I did, not enough information. I really wanted to post something thoughtful and insightful, but that can be difficult when you don’t know anything.
T1G has written about Rahma Salie.
Redneck hasn’t posted one at least not yet, but he feels the same as I do, that there are more important things to be posted about than the normal daily drivel.
Lisa did the same thing that I did, and posted a few days early, knowing (rightly) that the effects of the weekend might drag over until today, particularly since she had a long flight to look forward to as well.
Gennie has posted a touching tribute to Darya Lin.
Eric offers up his post in honor of Calvin Dawson.
I’ve only posted links and trackbacks to those sites I have been to this morning that have their tributes up. In most cases I have attempted to link to the permanent entry and send a trackback. Those that are hosted at MuNu, well, still not sure if your trackbacks are working, when I click the link it gives me something weird. I will add more links when I get home later today if there are more posts.
Updated – Here is the full updated list of victims, along with links to the blogs that are doing tributes for them.
Updated – If you have tried to get to the 2996 site, it exceeded it’s bandwidth. Here is a mirror site.
Also, Elisson posted a touching tribute to one of the firemen.
References
http://cf.newsday.com/911/victimsearch.cfm?id=1481
http://www.legacy.com/Sept11.asp?Page=TributeStory&PersonId=96905
New York Times, 12-29-2001
http://www.irishtribute.com/tributes/view.adp@d=236920&t=237669.html
The view from the door of the hotel room
Updated November 2007 – This is an older entry, for the latest updates in the Natalie Holloway Case you will want to read my archives on Natalee Holloway with the latest information on the three young men who have been arrested once again. Please leave a comment and let me know you’ve visited.
Update 9-5-2006
Daedalus and I have been carrying on a little conversation in the comments and he has brought forth some really good points on the investigation. Even though I might think he is wrong, I figured I would update this post. Also, since there are quite a few comments, I figured I would paste my most recent comment to him here as well. His portion of the conversation are in italics:
Update 8-29-2006
Apparently the Aruban government has asked the Netherlands to take the lead in the still ongoing investigation. You can find a bit more information at Blogs for Natalee. The story is also linked from here.
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The original post was made on June 26, 2006. I will occasionally update as I need, rather than making any more separate posts. As this one (out of 15 or 20) garnered the most comments, I will make this one the default Natalee Holloway post.
Apparently not only have they released the DJ, but Joran Van Der Sloot’s father as well. From what the Aruban Government reported earlier in the day, the only reason that they were holding him was as leverage to get Joran to talk anyway.
The rest of the search and rescue team from Texas has also arrived. Hopefully there can be an end to this in the next few days. I would think it extremely unlikely that she is still alive though, but anything is possible.
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Some of the translations have been borrowed from Aruba Getagrip. For the rest of the Netherlands newspapers, I generally use Bablefish. Thanks.
It’s the same as always. You seem to know so much about other countries. I can assure you that legal matters, in final, are the responsibility of the Dutch Government.
I only know what I have researched. Most of the information I have gotten about the laws of Aruba, and the Netherlands are from their web sites.
You are right, as you know, that the FINAL responsibility is in the hands of the Dutch. From Aruba’s web site:
Judicial powers lie with the Common Courts in Aruba in the Netherlands Antilles, and ultimately with the High Court of Justice in Holland.
I could be wrong, but the way I take that is that the Aruba police handle it’s investigations internally, but that final justice is administered by the Supreme Court of Justice in the Netherlands. That pretty much fits in with what I said before, but I did say that they have no jurisdiction. In that I am wrong.
Also from aruba.com: Aruba’s Judicial System
You do not comment on all the issues; not convenient?
I don’t know enough about the FBI files that your government has requested to comment on it yet, the same with Beth Twitty’s possible obstruction of justice. I felt like I wanted to do a bit more research before answering those questions. While we are discussing them though, what about Paul van Der Sloot’s obstruction of justice, or the fact that he told his son, “no body, no crime”?
About people hanging in the streets of LA and NY; is it OK if they get killed and nobody cares?
Of course it’s not OK if they get killed there. I think that it is more a matter of perception. For instance, my brother spent a considerable amount of time in Israel during a couple of trips in the 1980s. He did a bit of writing and research on the Intifada. Eventually he found that he needed to get out of the country quickly because he was also interviewing Palestinians. Obviously the government of Israel did not like that. Had something bad happened to him people are prone to say things like “what do you expect hanging out with the PLO?” Would that have made it any easier? Hell no. I took my children to Disney World last fall. I expect it to be safe for them as well as myself. I also don’t expect to be robbed or killed there. Because that is MY PERCEPTION of the place, the perception that Disney World has put out to the public. Aruba also does the same thing. It is perceived to be the warm friendly place where nothing bad happens. From Aruba.com:
Aruba offers consistently great weather, island wide safety, unique scenic beauty combined with unmatched crystal clear waters and white sandy beaches.
Does that mean I don’t think bad things can happen there? Of course not, but if they do, I expect things to get taken care of. To use the LA and New York as an example again, I would unfortunately expect bad things to happen to a young single girl in either place. My perception of both is that they are places where bad things happen. Right or wrong, that is how they are perceived by a lot of people.
What really sucks, and gives a lot of credence to your points is that here in my home state of Georgia, there are something like 68 unsolved cases of kids that have gone missing and NEVER been accounted for.
I pointed out Cathrina, as a simple and current example, because the US always wants to police the world. And yet, in their own country, they can not even take care of their own people. I don’t blame for missing that point. You’re American and obiously white.
I get the point entirely, but it has nothing to do with the discussion at hand. As far as Katrina goes, my government’s response has been awful. I don’t really agree that it is my government’s responsibility to take care of all the people affected by Katrina in the first place, but that is my political belief more than anything. Since they HAVE decided to be in the business of taking care of people, they should have handled it better.
Aruba did not ask to take over the investigation; we did. Again you are misinformed by your own coloured media.
I read on aruba.com back in March that the Netherlands had sent police to help, at that time it didn’t say anything about who requested at that time.
According to an article published two days ago on ad.nl Aruba requested the police from the Netherlands. Of course that is YOUR colored media that said that, not mine. Perhaps the American media owns them now too? Or maybe you need to do a bit more research as well before you presume to know all of the facts. I live in the US but I cannot assume to know all of the facts about everything that happens here.
On September 1st ad.nl also published an article stating that Rudy Croes, the Aruban Minister of Justice requested the help. Again, that could be incorrect, but it is YOUR media making these statements.
There is even a policeman on this site who claims Joran did it! On what evidence?? Nice cops you have!! Is it his ‘guts feeling’ ???
On this site even people said she was sold to be a slave… My god, from what planet are you?
Actually that has been a pretty common rumor even on Aruba and not so implausible once you think about it. Supposedly there are something like four million women and children involved in the sex slave trade. I ad initially never considered this, it sounds so much like a bad movie, but apparently this is pretty widespread, particularly in Central and South America.
The fact that Americans don’t go to the Antilles so much anymore is good news for people in Europe. They didn’t go there anymore because of the behaviour of Americans.
I actually disagree with a lot of people in the “Boycott Aruba” crap. At one point I thought it was a good idea, but I have since changed my mind on that. If I had the time and money, I would love to visit.
In Europe your exitement about this case is regarded overdone and unjust. Has anyone considered she went to swim and drowned? Or just left? What was she doing in the Hilton Hotel at 3 in the morning?
The possibility that she drowned is actually pretty high on my list. It is entirely possible that she was drunk, went for a midnight swim, and became fish food. So why all of the subterfuge and lying from Van Der Sloot and the Kalpoes?
Yes they changed there stories once. What would you do if the girl you dated the night before is disapeared?
Tell the truth. I don’t have any reason for anyone to question my integrity. Apparently these boys don’t feel the same way. His story changed more than once as well.
Why is it that he said that the size 14 running shoes left on the beach were his, when he wears size 10.5 and when he was arrested he had them on. Whose were they and why would he lie about them?
At first, Joran declared that Natalee herself asked to go to the North side of the island to see sharks, a very ridiculous proposition in the darkness of night.
Afterward, later in the same interrogation, Joran tells police: “At no time did Natalee ask to go to the north side of Aruba!”
Joran himself declared that the (supposed) idea of going to the lighthouse came from him!
What about the documents that were leaked and published on DIARIO that Joran stated at one point that Deepak had raped and murdered Natalee?
In one of the reports, Joran says the following: “I have a suspicion that Deepak went back to where the girl was (referring to Natalee who would have remained at the Fisherman’s Hut)”.
“I know how he thinks”. “From something that happened in the past at the Internet Café where Deepak works, I believe that he is capable of sexual violation”. “Satish, I don’t know.”
Joran van Der Sloot gave this declaration on June 29,2005.
On June 30th, his story changed again.
Get your facts straight and judge on the facts you have.
Actually, for the most part I do a pretty decent job on the facts. Unfortunately I have to rely on Babelfish for the Dutch to English translations, but it helps.
Dear Richard, it is not personal. I am, as many Europeans, only surprised by the hype. I wish you a very good life in your country. I only hope you get another president soon
As do I, but unfortunately a new President isn’t going to help matters much. Our government is so entrenched in taking our money and redistributing it to others and mired in what THEY can get out of it that changing President’s is not going to help things very much. Also I don’t take it personally at all. I enjoy a good argument, and disagreeing with me only makes me look harder at the facts. A bit of research is good for the mind. The hype comes from the fact that she is white, and pretty. Had it been some big old bag with a huge ass she would not have gotten the coverage that she did. As sad as it sounds, Natalee Holloway was great for ratings.
If this case is solved, I hope we can ‘speak’ again.
As do I. Thank you for making me think just a little bit on my first day of vacation.