Lost Forever: Some Faces

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'Frasier' Producer, Pundit Were on Crashed Planes
By Sarah Tippit

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The co-creator of ``Frasier,'' the widow of actor Tony Perkins, the wife of the nation's top legal officer and a man who had flown across the U.S. to retrieve his family's dog, were among the victims killed in Tuesday's devastating attacks against the United States, officials said.

As news about the identities of some of the dead began surfacing Wednesday, the tragedy the United States was still trying to absorb began taking on a more human face.

Osgood ``Oz'' Perkins II, an actor in ``Legally Blonde,'' said his photographer-actress mother Berry Berenson, the widow of the late ``Psycho'' star Anthony Perkins, was among those killed when hijacked American Airlines Flight 11 was rammed into the north tower of the World Trade Center.

Berenson, 53, who appeared in such films as ``Cat People,'' ''Winter Kills'' and ``Remember My Name,'' had reportedly been returning from a Cape Cod vacation. She was also the sister of actress Marisa Berenson and the granddaughter of art historian Bernard Berenson, who helped assemble some of the greatest art collections in the United States.

Attorney and news commentator Barbara Olson, the wife of President Bush (news - web sites)'s Solicitor General Theodore Olson, was aboard American Airlines Flight 77 en route from Washington Dulles International Airport to Los Angeles that was hijacked and crashed into the Pentagon (news - web sites).

Olson placed two phone calls from the plane to her husband telling him that hijackers armed with knives and cardboard cutters herded passengers and crew -- including the pilot -- toward the back of the plane.

``What should I tell the pilots to do?'' CNN reported Olson asking her husband. Ted Olson told CNN that his wife planned to fly Monday, but delayed her travel because she wanted to be with him the morning of his birthday, which was Tuesday.

She was a former federal prosecutor and served as chief investigative counsel to the House Committee on Government Reform and Oversight, where she investigated the Clinton Administration ``Travelgate'' scandal. As a legal analyst and commentator she has appeared on all the major news networks.

Writer-producer David Angell, 54, who co-created ``Frasier'' and ``Wings'' with partners Peter Casey and David Lee, was a passenger, along with his wife, Lynn, a school librarian and advocate for troubled children, on Flight 11.

Lee and Casey described Angell as ``a kind and gentle man with a quiet exterior that masked one of the sharpest comedy minds ever to write for television.''

``His fingerprints are all over some of the funniest moments in 'Cheers,' 'Wings' and 'Frasier,''' they said in a statement.

The Angells had been returning home to Pasadena, California, from a family wedding.

The Los Angeles Kings hockey team confirmed that scouts Garnet ``Ace'' Bailey and Mark Bavis were aboard United Airlines Flight 175, which was en route from Boston to Los Angeles when it was hijacked and flown into the other World Trade Center tower. The two were headed from Boston back to Los Angeles for the start of a training camp.

Businessman Christopher Newton, 39, of Anaheim Hills, California, had recently relocated to Arlington, Virginia, with his family but was returning to the West Coast aboard American Airlines Flight 77 to retrieve his family's yellow Labrador retriever, Buddy, who had been temporarily left behind during the move.
 
I honestly don't grieve more over those people, than over all the other "unknown" ones to us, but know and important to somebody in the world.

They all deserve our thoughts in this sad moment.
 
We will continue to hear more and more news behind the faceless numbers of people involved in this horrific sensless act of violence, and I can't help but tear up at these humanizing facts and profiles of the victims. All of us are shocked and appalled at what has happened, but it is easier to cope with the enormity of it when we are only reading about numbers instead of the character behind those who constitute the numbers.

I doubt that this post was meant to single out just a few people and make them seem more important than the countless other victims involved. It was simply the beginning of a flood of information we will receive about the victims and the families left behind.

Last night when I was watching the news I saw the clip of the brother of the pilot of flight 11. Watching him talk about his brother and the affect on his family was heartwrenching. These facts make things so much more real to us. It is like tightening the focus on the lens of the camera. The picture still exists but once in focus - it is seen in its entirety.

Personally I welcome any and all information like this. In in an almost morbid facination I want to feel the pain in the hopes that in empathy, help in some form or fashion. Or maybe it is just simply a way to prepare myself if I were to be a victim myself? I don't know. I do know that it is a natural and welcome tendency for humans to want to gather as much information as possible about the people who most impact their lives. The more we can relate to them, the more empathatic as a society we will become.
 
So far, the ones that got me, are the family of three aboard on of the two flights that crashed into the towers. It was a mother, a father, and a 2-year old little girl.

The father had a cell phone, and got ahold of his mother on it. He told her they were hijacked.

(From CNN.Com)

The brief morning call was a slight bit of solace for a Connecticut mother, whose adult son called minutes before his jet struck in New York City. Peter Hanson was traveling with his wife and 2-year-old daughter.

"All I want to say is they went down together," said Hanson's mother, Eunice. "They went down together. They stayed together in death. That's the only consolation I have."
 
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