I was a little hesitant to post this really sad article from the Washington Post, but some things are necessary. Often, we have to be reminded of that which is important, especially now, when we’re bogged down in the quagmire: the presidential campaign.
The attacks of September 11, 2001 are still claiming casualties.
Kenneth Edelle Foster, 51, a retired Army sergeant whose wife lost her life at the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, died Oct. 10 at his home in Arlington, Tex., of pulmonary fibrosis and congestive heart failure. He had lived in the Washington area since 1972 and moved back to North Texas, where he grew up, in 2003.
A civilian Army policy analyst, Mr. Foster was working in his office in the Hoffman Building in Alexandria on Sept. 11 when he got word that a plane had hit the Pentagon, where his wife, Sandra Nadine Hill, had worked for 25 years. He jumped into his truck and raced toward the billowing black cloud he could see in the distance, going the wrong way on Interstate 95. [SNIP]
Mr. Foster sank into a debilitating depression after his wife's death. He tried to commit suicide two months later on his favorite holiday, Thanksgiving. After he survived a game of Russian roulette while home alone that day, he sought help and was admitted to the intensive care unit at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. He then went to counseling twice a week, started reaching out to the many people concerned about him and decided to move back to Texas. He told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram that staying in the Washington area meant he was dying slowly each day as he relived the events of Sept. 11.
He set up a $25,000 annual college scholarship named for his wife, given to a senior girl from a District public school. His wife, he told The Post in 2002, valued education above everything else.
Mr. Foster had planned to travel to Washington on Sept. 16 for the second annual fund-raising banquet in his wife's memory, where he planned to award another Sandra Nadine Hill Scholarship. [SNIP]
He was hospitalized shortly before he was to leave and was unable to make the trip.[SNIP]
Mr. Foster's friends and family were fully aware of the seriousness of his lung disease, which got worse after he lost his wife, but they don't believe his illness caused his death.
"He could have got over his physical ailments, I believe," his mother said, "but he just didn't want to live. He died of a broken heart. We all know that."During my search of Mrs. Foster’s name, I came upon her picture: a slim, friendly-faced black woman (I’ll do the living Fosters the courtesy of not posting the photo here).
She and Mr. Foster had been married for quite some time but never had any children of their own. On September 11th, the couple had had an appointment with an adoption agency. We all know what happened instead.
Affirming life, while monsters planned to execute her; destroying her husband and killing him later.
When you read this story and after you shed those tears, remember who it is that has avenged these deaths and the thousands of others. Remember who took the fight to the terrorists and who didn’t. (And who may or may not want to.)
Are we safer now than before? Time will tell. However, one thing is for sure: no amount of diplomacy, appeasement, or backing-down will work for an enemy intent on dying and taking good people like the Fosters (and you) with them.
Consider that on November 2, 2004.
