9/11 one year later: victims and survivors grieve, remember and raise pointed questions

Ebony, Oct, 2002 by Marsha Gilbert, Kevin Chappell

Since last September, Wills has given 30 to 40 speeches at schools, churches and business meetings, telling people about her experience. She credits God with getting her and others out alive. "I tried to take this tragedy and turn it around," she says. "I decided I would share His glory on speaking engagements."

Wills plans to attend a September 11 commemorative ceremony, but not as a speaker.

There were 189 deaths at the Pentagon: 125 were inside the building and 64 on American Airlines Flight 77.

"I asked, `Why me?'" Wills says. "But now I feel more blessed than guilty."

Wills says she and her family have changed since the blast. Never a hugger, she left home on that fateful morning without really saying goodbye to her family. Thinking about it in the hospital and realizing how much she loved her family, she decided to change.

"I begged God to let me see my children," she says. "I'm more of a hugger now because I never thought I would hug again."

There is a new climate at the Wills' home. Nowadays, her husband of 18 years, Kirk, seems to sit closer to her on the sofa and occasionally rubs her back while they watch television. Wills says he seems to be saying, "I'm glad you're alive."

Their 13-year-old daughter, Portia, says from time to time, "Just think, if you weren't here ..." Their 8 year old daughter, Percilla, who is a hugger, clings to her mom even more now.

Wills later created a ritual that permits family members to show their love and appreciation daily. They each share one-minute hugs before they leave the house. Wills also gets up earlier to spend more time with her family.

"It reduces their anxiety and reassures them that I'll be okay," Wills says. "Thank God I'm here."

Wills says through her feelings of guilt and confusion, she never felt angry with God.

"God is not about destruction," she says. "Man has free will. Man chose to run the plane into the building."

Lt. Col. Wills says she believes God predestines everyone's fate. It was God's will that she lived and it was, she believes, time to go to glory with God for the people who died that day.

Flight Attendant WANDA GREEN Remembered by Her Family

SANDRA JAMERSON was in a business meeting in St. Louis, Mo., when a man interrupted to say that two planes had crashed into the Word Trade Center towers. Jamerson immediately thought of her identical twin sister, Wanda Green, a United Airlines flight attendant, who was flying that day.

Jamerson, a project manager for SBC Telecommunications, left the meeting and repeatedly tried to reach Green on her cellphone. She also call their parents in Oakland, Calif., and Green's children, Jennifer and Joe Green, in Linden, N.J. Between calls, she watched television reports and logged on to the Internet with her laptop computer for information on Green's flight. Finally, word came from her mother, Aserene Smith, that United Airlines Flight 93 had crashed in Pennsylvania. That was Wanda's flight, Smith said, crying and screaming, "She's gone! She's gone!"

Shaking uncontrollably and fighting back tears, Jamerson called her 18-year-old nephew, Joe, again. He, too, had heard the flight number from television, and was frantically crying, "I want my mommy," and wondering aloud if things would have been different if he hadn't driven his mother to the airport that morning, if he had made her late for her flight, if, if, if....