A Feeling of Renewal

 

Mary Catherine Murphy Boffa

Marsh & McLennan

At just forty-five years of age, Mary Catherine Murphy Boffa was filled of a renewed sense of energy and purpose in the late summer of 2021.  An Associate Vice-President at Marsh & McLennan, she worked on the 93rd floor of the North Tower at the World Trade Center.  She was one of four Murphy sisters, a quartet that formed the backbone of a sprawling, fun-loving family that included thirty (30) first cousins.  Not terribly long before the terrible Tuesday morning on which she was killed, she had separated from her husband, Joseph Boffa, and had moved into a two-bedroom apartment in Staten Island.  She bought new furniture.  She enjoyed the views of the Verrazano Narrows Bridge that it afforded her.   Most of all, she loved what it symbolized.  As her nephew Michael Trudeau said in the weeks after his aunt's death, "She was very excited.  It was renewal for her."    

On September 11, 2001, Mary Catherine Murphy Boffa was in her office on the 93rd Floor of the North Tower when the murderous cowards who had hijacked American Airlines Flight 11 after it departed Logan Airport in Boston that morning, flew it into the building at 8:46 am.   She was one of the 358 Marsh McLennan colleagues and friends killed that morning.  

The 22nd anniversary of the September 11 attacks is three weeks from today.  In 21 days, it shall mark 22 years since Mary Catherine Murphy Boffa and the other innocents were murdered in Lower Manhattan, at the Pentagon, and on United Airlines Flight 93.  The next time you hear someone ask aloud (whether to you or not) "Why do you still remember and talk about September 11?", you may feel free to tell that person that it shall be forever remembered and spoken about because of people like Mary Catherine Murphy Boffa.  She was poised to all begin anew once more.  As her nephew Michael Trudeau described it, she was experiencing a 'renewal'.  The chance to see where that renewal was going to take her and the chance for her to chart a course for this next act of her life was stolen from her.  It is as apt a demonstration of life's inherent inequities as any other of which I can think.  

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