September 11, 2001, In memoriam: Barbara (Bobbi) Arestegui

Posted annually on 9/11 since 2006 (I've missed a few, my apologies to Bobbi)

September 11, 2001, 7:59am, United Flight 11 leaves Boston's Logan airport.

In just a few short minutes, Barbara (Bobbi) Arestegui, 38, of Marstons Mills, Massachusetts would be one of the first casualties of that day. Assigned to the First Class cabin, Bobbi and fellow attendant Karen Martin were attacked shortly after takeoff.


In less than 40 minutes, the rest of the crew and passengers of Flight 11 died in the North Tower of the World Trade Center.

There are no public posts from friends or family on Bobbi. Two stories were published about her and her boyfriend Wayne. From them, the information below is shared.


"The first thing I noticed, of course, was that she is absolutely beautiful," he said. "We had a nice talk, probably for about 15 minutes. I asked her if it would be possible to get her phone number."

She told him sternly: "No, I don't give out my home number."

Wayne shrugged his shoulders and walked away, thinking: I gave it my best shot. She stopped him with one word.

"But," she said.
He turned.
"I'll give it to you."

She was living in Washington, D.C., the middle of five girls from a California family with Spanish Basque roots. Two of the girls would join the tight-knit community of flight attendants.

Her typical schedule was three or four days on followed by three or four days home.

She turned their house into a cozy retreat with a garden out back. They made a habit of walking the cranberry bogs, picking blueberries and having breakfast at the Mills Restaurant. She loved to cook - she dreamed of attending culinary school.

Bobbi picked up three stray and abused cats: Olive, Bruiser and Pumpkin. She'd loved animals since she was a kid in Hawthorne, a suburb of Los Angeles.

"She was a gentle person, yet tough when she needed to be," said Rosie Arestegui, who gave her daughter Barbara the nickname Bobbi. "She knew her job so well. She could do two or three people's work, plus hers, and it would be done perfectly."

Colleagues of Bobbi repeated that praise when Wayne met them in Boston on Friday. He talked with more than 50 people who knew his girlfriend through work. They remembered her as energetic; a huge heart in a 5-foot-3-inch frame.

Bobbi was not scheduled to work Flight 11 that day. But she had accepted extra flights; she was saving up her earned vacation to take a trip with Wayne at the end of September.

She got up about 2:30 that morning and within a few hours was out the door.

"Usually she wakes me up when she leaves. She didn't wake me up this time," he said.

But she did keep another of their rituals: At 6:45 a.m., he got a phone call from the airport.

"She told me that she was just about to board. She was waiting for them to finish cleaning the plane," he said. "She was in a wonderful mood, better than normal."


To view other sites honoring those that died on 9/11

Links:
http://www.september11victims.com/september11Victims/VictimInfo.asp?ID=3
http://www.flightattendants.org/Memorials/AA_FA_Barbara_Arestegui.htm
http://www.inmemoriamonline.net/Profiles/Folders/A_Folder/Arestegui_Barbara-(AA11).html
http://www.capecodonline.com/special/terror/changessubtle11.htm

Someone who inspired you...

Two years ago I was asked to write about someone that inspired me. I did, and fortunately, shared it with her a couple of months later...
***********

Sometimes we find that in looking for inspiration that we have overlooked what was right before us all along. At the first mention of this project, I immediately thought of Sarah Palin. This woman, a wife and mother, had been raised in a tight-knit family, played sports and went to a small Christian college, obtaining her degree. She married and started a family with a husband that worked in his family's business and had separate jobs as the seasons changed. Palin became involved in her children's school PTA. Eventually running for Mayor of her town, and a small town it was. Everyone knew each other and when children departed from the way they were raised, a neighbor would intervene and return them to their parents - not so much that it took a village to raise a child, but that a village was there to support the parents in their job. She eventually was picked to chair a commission that accomplished in 3 years under her leadership what it had failed to do the previous 10 years - get multi-national oil companies to the table and completed an agreement that resulted in Alaskan citizens receiving substantial benefits from the depletion of the state's natural resources.

In doing so she went against her political party and rooted out corruption. Her run for Governor thereafter resulted in a huge margin of winning. Throughout it all, she was a wife and mother first. Her commitment to principled stands made her well worth the admiration she garnered. But I wondered if I had someone better to hold up? I sighed inwardly...of course I did.

This woman was born into a wealthy family. Her father had a national reputation in his field, but World War Two and an addiction to alcohol cost him his reputation, his business and eventually his respect. But his wife remained and the four daughters they raised made a transition to working class. This woman would work as an usherette in a theatre and her boyfriend ran the projector. After a couple years, instead of a proposal, the boyfriend dumped her.

Three years later he showed up on the doorstep of her mother and asked her to marry him and leave the country she called home. She said yes. Imagine the inner strength of that. Marriage, leaving your country all for a guy that dumped you. Yet she did, and the children came. Six children in 10 years. Two miscarriages marred the happiness, but together, this woman and her husband did something no one in their families had ever done - they bought a home. Fixed it up, sold it and bought another one. In 1964 they were the original real estate flippers. Her husband worked nights, went to school during the day and moved from sweeping buses to maintaining high voltage substations for the Chicago Transit system.

To this day, some 56 years later, my mother and I share a connection that miles and daily living can not break. I have lived in 8 states, and while that is not the same as leaving your homeland, my willingness to jump into the deep end and move forward is in my genes. My mother's commitment to raising children that were cared for and loved has found few positive comparisons. She maintains a log book with every birthday and Christmas present bought and it's cost. None of her children can say one was favored over another, one loved more. That sense of fairness has never wavered. I am reminded every time I see that book that it was never about the dollar and cents of my parents giving, it was knowing that in the future their children might mistakenly accuse them and they would have proof of their caring for each equally. That book now has spouses, grand children and great grand children and the commitment is still there. Steadfastness in the face of everything.

We were not raised to be religious, we were raised to be reverent. To be respectful and to be respectable. My sibs and I have led others in every task we have been charged with. Loyalty given has been loyalty earned. When my brother passed, the City of Chicago Council recognized him and his contribution to the community. That certificate sits next to my brother's ashes in the kitchen/dining area in my parents house - so that he will always know we remember him and keep him close. Love not til death do us part, but forever.

My parents received a normal education, my father apprenticed and earned his master's license before he left for the United States. He did it again here in a new field will working and raising a family. When I received my Bachelors, they simply nodded and said, good job. We didn't get extra praise for doing what was expected. Ask my mother today if she did anything special and she will deny it. She raised six children that have benefited and contributed to society. Today that merits special attention because of its rarity. She expected we would all work and live to our potential. I can't say that we have all done as well as we could, but that didn't change my mother's attitude towards us.

My mother, a wife, a plumber, a cook, a chauffeur, a seamstress, an electrician, a painter, a den mother, a friend, has no awards or certificates to celebrate her accomplishments - she will point to me and my sibs as her reward.

When my partner of 18+ years passed, my mother said my strength and my adherence to my principles moved her to tears. My partner's daughter was embraced as my parent's 15th grandchild. My mother and father never wavered in their acceptance and support of our life. When my illness forced me into a dependent state, they were there to support and encourage. My mother talked to me every day. I am 56 and I still listen to and am comforted by her wisdom and advice.

A wife, a mother, a woman that I am still trying to emulate because I have found no other woman in my life more worthy than her of my ambitions.

The one word, mom. No job, career or ambition is of higher regard.

You will be assimilated....

From Jerry Pournelle "migration without assimilation is invasion"

We have made the idea of assimilation a bad thing in popular culture - it is too....BORG like. Except, the 'melting pot' is an important part of becoming American. If you leave your country, go to another country (ANY other country) you will be expected to learn the language, follow the laws and participate in their culture. That is how my parents were expected to act when they came to THIS country, and how they planned to act. Now, we not only don't expect them to follow our laws, we are going to bend our culture/society to their expectations!

The 'anti-appropriation movement' is a direct attack on the 'melting pot' assimilation process.

The first step in assimilation, in becoming American, is to lose the hyphen.

Disrespect or Patriotism?

The Colin Kaepernick stunt continues to produce minor ripples in the convosphere.

When I went to church with V and CJ, I stood when everyone else stood, I sat quietly, I didn't read a book or listen to music on headphones. I didn't share their beliefs, but I was respectful. THAT is the difference. You don't have to share the beliefs, but respect someone's house when you are in it - or don't GO THERE.

No one says America is perfect, but when a black can earn 19 million dollars, or be President, or Attorney General or Governor or CEO or any other damn thing we have in this country....well, it doesn't give them a pass to be disrespectful of the society that gave them that opportunity.

The breakdown of American Society is the coarsening of the way people think of it. When segments believe there is nothing redeemable about our society, that it is racist, or misogynist, or ablist or whatever claim people to make about our society to argue for their withholding their support - except for their daily participation and benefit of it - then outside influences have the opportunity to widen the cracks and further damage what they can not damage themselves.

It is said that strong cultures are not destroyed from without, but from within. And that is what is happening. We are fracturing ourselves by isolating smaller and smaller groups, segregation writ large and self imposed, and then withholding our support from the larger society when it faces external and existential threats. More and more people are embracing those ideas and ideals that are destructive, socialism being one of the largest. But also the demand that others not assimilate into our culture but retain their ancestral own within our borders. The argument that our culture is no better than any other is demonstrably false.

It is not disrespect of another culture to ask the people that come here to assimilate and participate in our culture - after all, if theirs had been superior, why would they have left it? The benefits of our culture are a function of its foundations which was created by the assimilation and participation of everyone that has been born or chose to move here.

I could attend that church, participate in it's community, share the foundations but only by being respectful of it. Holding yourself apart, being disrespectful of the culture that you live in and benefit from is not making things better, it is making it much worse than you think it is. The alternatives are out there to see, and it should scare the hell out of you.

Cognative dissonance

Let us compare:

Stop the Keystone pipeline - an infrastructure project that will create tens of thousands of jobs (hold that bold thought in your mind)

Create a trillion dollar program to build bridges, dams and other infrastructure projects to put millions of people to work (add that in there too)

Provide a free college education to everyone that wants one

Allow millions of uneducated, unskilled illegal immigrants to come to, stay in United States.


These are the ideas of Obama, Hillary and the Left. Let's consider them.

If we create those millions of jobs that require 8 hours of physical labor every day, five days a week, 280 days a year, who is going to work them? The 50 year olds that have been laid off from manufacturing jobs lost to overseas? Hundreds of thousands of college graduates?

Or the uneducated, unskilled illegal immigrants?

Do you think unions will welcome those illegal immigrants into their ranks? I do. And all those 50 yr old ex-labor union workers will be on the street...picking up their $150 a month union pension. (My father paid into his union pension fund for 37 years, got less than $100/mo upon retirement)

So. Remember that first project? It is not the actual project that benefits us, it is what flows in that pipeline that does - millions of barrels of oil. Necessary to run all that equipment building all those projects.

Oh, we have millions of uneducated, unskilled, unemployed workers now - the black community. Wonder who will be hurt most by people willing to do physically demanding work for $12/hr, 8 hours a day, five days a week?

It is not that the Left doesn't think, it is that they don't understand consequences.