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
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