Hawaii relatives skip
9/11 tapesThe government plays recordings of
calls from the four aircraft
It's a daily struggle for Laura Brough to get along without her mother -- and past the memory of how she died.
So nothing but pain will come of hearing recordings of the last phone calls of passengers on her mother's plane or the three other aircraft hijacked on Sept. 11, 2001, she said.
Those who lost relatives in the hijackings were allowed to hear the exchanges yesterday during a three-hour, closed-door briefing in South Brunswick, N.J.
Brough's mother, Honolulu antiques dealer Georgine Rose Corrigan, was killed in the crash of United Airlines Flight 93. But Brough decided not to attend yesterday's briefing.
The parents of Christine Snyder, the only other Hawaii resident to be killed aboard one of the hijacked planes and who was also on Flight 93, were not there, either.
"It's just so extremely devastating," said Brough, of Hawaii Kai, through tears. "We're still in shock that Mom's not here. She baby-sat the kids. She helped with homework projects. It's a difficult way of life that we're trying to adjust to."
Estimates put the briefing's attendance at about 130 people.
Family members were asked to sign nondisclosure forms, as the Justice Department believed their comments could jeopardize the prosecution of Zacarias Moussaoui, the only person charged in the United States as part of the 9/11 conspiracy.
The tapes were said to include calls made by American Airlines Flight 11 flight attendants Betty Ong and Amy Sweeney before their plane hit the World Trade Center. And relatives did indicate they received new information about the last moments of family members.
Passengers on Flight 93 "died on their feet and doing the very best they could," said Alice Hoglan, of Redwood Estates, Calif., whose son was aboard.
The craft, which departed from Newark, N.J., and went down in a western Pennsylvania field, is believed to have crashed after passengers fought with their hijackers.
Brough said she believed that her uncle, Kevin Marisay, of New Jersey, did attend the briefing. However, he could not be reached for comment yesterday.
Corrigan, who had been well known among Oahu's antiques sellers, had been on an East Coast buying trip in September and was returning to Honolulu for a collectibles show at the Blaisdell Center.
Neal Snyder, whose daughter Christine was 32 and married only three months when she died, said he is considering attending a second invitation-only briefing for family members scheduled for July 14 in Boston.
He said that when he learned three months ago about yesterday's scheduled briefing, he started to think about going but then "thought better of it."
"Hopefully, we'll hear something that we've not heard before," he said. "It's got to be a powerful thing to hear. ... A part of you wants to hear your daughter's voice. There's another part that says I don't think I could take it."
Snyder has visited Flight 93's crash site in Pennsylvania, and said the experience was surprisingly healing. He hopes hearing the tapes will produce the same effect.
"It (the crash site) does give you a strange quietness," he said. "I think for family members that recognize their sons or daughters or husbands or wives, if they were to recognize their (loved one's) voice (on the tapes), I think it would be very powerful."
Christine Snyder was an arborist with the Outdoor Circle. On 9/11 she was on her way home from an American Forestry Conference in Washington, D.C., and visiting New York City. Her husband, Ian Pescaia, could not reached yesterday.
Neal Snyder said that he hopes the tapes will produce clues about what happened in the moments before his daughter died.
Nearly 2,800 people were killed when the hijacked aircraft crashed into the two World Trade Center towers, the Pentagon and in Pennsylvania. Not counting the 19 hijackers, 246 passengers and crew members were killed.