Forever Young

On Tuesday, September 11, 2001, American Airlines Flight 77 left Dulles International Airport with five children on board.  Three of the kids were sixth-graders from the Washington, D.C. public school system who were flying to California, accompanied by their respective teachers, on a trip sponsored by National Geographic. Flight 77 never made it to California.  It was hijacked shortly after takeoff and then flown by its hijackers into the Pentagon, killing everyone on board and one hundred and twenty-five people on the ground. 

Bernard Curtis Brown II, eleven years young, loved school but was afraid of flying. So much so in fact that before his big trip, his dad made sure he had a heart-to-heart with his young son - reassuring him that everything would be just fine.   His mother, Sinita, spoke glowingly of her little boy's love of school, "He lived to go to school.  If he was sick, he would always say he was feeling better so he could get to school." He was a sixth-grader at Leckie Elementary. His dad, Chief Petty Officer Bernard Brown, United States Navy, worked at the Pentagon in 2001.  On that terrible Tuesday morning, fortunately, he was not at the Pentagon.  He was out of the office participating in a previously-scheduled golf outing.  

Rodney Dickens, also eleven years young and also a sixth-grader, represented Ketcham Elementary on the trip to California.  His obituary in The Washington Post described him as a honor student who never failed to make the honor roll. He loved to read, to play computer games, and to play with his two sisters (one a year older and one a year younger than Rodney) and his two little brothers.  He adored his mom, LaShawn.  According to his aunt, Cynthia Dickens, Rodney's favorite thing to do was to watch professional wrestling.  I seem to recall a lifetime or so ago, when my own son was eleven years old, he spent a fair amount of time watching pro wrestling.  When I read that about this youngster, it made me smile.  

Asia Cottom, age eleven, was a sixth-grader at Backus Middle School.  She loved science, math, and Tweety Bird from the Looney Tunes cartoons.  She boarded Flight 77 that morning for her cross-country trip to California wearing her "Tweety gear".  She enjoyed and excelled at science and math. Her goal was to be a pediatrician.  Asia was one of two Cottom children.  She and her big brother, Isiah, were the younger members of a close-knit quartet headed by their mother and father, Michelle and Clifton Cottom.  In the aftermath of losing their youngest child - and their only daughter - Michelle and Clifton Cottom did something I consider extraordinary.  They started the Asia SiVon Cottom Memorial Scholarship Fund.  The Fund provides financial assistance to "deserving students who have excelled academically and are pursuing undergraduate, graduate, and post-graduate degrees in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM)."   To date it has provided more than $265,000 in scholarships to close to one hundred students.  

Each of these three families, in the all-too-brief time they shared with their child, did their job.  There is so much that time and memory fade away.  It is the job of all of us to make sure that their work remains untouched by either. 

-AK