9/11 victims with Las Vegas ties remembered

The trading day was about to begin for commodities broker Doug Edwards in Jersey City, N.J., when a colleague said a plane had just hit the World Trade Center.

Edwards walked to the other side of the building's 24th floor and, looking across the Hudson River, saw a hole in the north tower. Edwards and others stared in disbelief for a couple of minutes before returning to their desks, where they would divide their attention between work and the news on television.

Soon, they learned that a second plane had hit the World Trade Center, and a voice rang out, "Everyone get out of the building."

Edwards, then 32, grabbed his wallet and keys and headed down the stairs. He returned to his apartment in nearby Hoboken and gathered with several other co-workers around his television to await news of the fate of friends and loved ones in New York City.

From the roof of the apartment building, they could see the World Trade Center. One man's younger brother had started a job there just a few weeks earlier, and Edwards himself had worked there for two years in the mid-1990s.

An hour later, the group went to the Hoboken PATH station to see whether any trains were returning from New York City. They had no cell phone service, and they learned the trains weren't moving.

By then, they knew that both WTC towers had collapsed and that another plane had slammed into the Pentagon.

Edwards realized that he probably had lost some friends that morning, but he was unprepared for the phone call he would receive that afternoon.

"Can you believe your mom was on the plane?" he remembers his aunt Jane saying.

EDWARDS HAS BEEN LV FACE OF TRAGEDY

Edwards had spent the previous weekend in Hoboken with his mom, Las Vegas teacher Barbara Edwards. The 58-year-old woman was on leave while recovering from a broken arm, and used the time to travel back East.

She was coming home Sept. 11 on American Airlines Flight 77 when the hijacked plane, with 64 people on board, was intentionally crashed into the Pentagon.

For a decade, Barbara Edwards has been the Las Vegas face of the national tragedy, which claimed nearly 3,000 lives. She was the only full-time Las Vegas resident killed in the terrorist attacks, and, on each anniversary, photos of the smiling, rotund woman appear alongside stories about her in local newspapers and newscasts.

Others with ties to Las Vegas also died that day. Barbara Edwards was traveling with two friends, part-time Las Vegans Darlene "Dee" and Wilson "Bud" Flagg.

Flight attendant Renee May, whose mother lived in Las Vegas, also was on that flight. She called her mom, Nancy, to tell her the plane had been hijacked and asked her to contact American Airlines headquarters.

And Army Lt. Col. Karen Wagner, a 1982 graduate of the ROTC program at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, was working at the Pentagon when the plane struck. She was one of 125 who died inside the building.

Wagner's sister, Kim, used to dread anniversaries of the attacks. While the memories still bring pain, she approaches the 10th anniversary with a different outlook:

"Now I embrace it because it's an opportunity for me to testify to the power of God and to encourage others and show them that there's still hope -- you can get through it."

SON RECALLS FINAL DAYS WITH EDWARDS

Doug Edwards, the second of Barbara Edwards' three sons, has turned down interview requests over the years.

"I've always felt that the story's not about me and what I went through," he said in an August telephone interview. "It's about my mom."

But he was a victim that day, too. In addition to his mother, he lost his best friend from high school, about a dozen other friends, and he can't even begin to count the acquaintances who died.

He was the last family member to see his mother alive, and as the 10th anniversary approaches, he agreed to tell his story publicly for the first time.

Doug Edwards, now 42 and living in Bridgewater, N.J., learned of his mother's plans to visit about a week or two before she arrived. The Palo Verde High School teacher had attended the wedding of a friend's daughter on Sept. 1 in Connecticut.

Barbara Edwards arrived at her son's apartment on Friday, Sept. 7, and they ate that night at a seafood restaurant with a friend of Doug's.

Mother and son spent a relaxing weekend walking around Hoboken, enjoying the Italian festival on the riverfront and the "perfect" weather. The conversation flowed as the two took advantage of the chance to catch up. Doug Edwards said his mother was a good listener: "She was interested in everything that you had to say."

Sunday night, they had dinner at a Louisiana-style bar and grill in Hoboken, where Barbara Edwards would meet her son's future girlfriend, the restaurant's manager.

"They hit it off in the brief time that they were talking," Doug Edwards said.

He and the woman had their first date the following night, when she came to his apartment to watch a Giants game and eat take-out. Their relationship has endured for the past 10 years.

Doug Edwards said the time he spent with his mother that September weekend was a rare treat because they usually saw each other about twice a year.

But the weekend passed quickly, and on Monday morning, Doug Edwards headed to work while his mother finished preparing for her departure. She would take a train to visit the Flaggs at their Millwood, Va., farm before flying home the following day.

"I didn't know the time or the flight number or anything like that," Doug Edwards recalled.

And it never occurred to him that his mother's flight could have been involved. He "was floored" when he received the call from her sister, Jane Gollan.

"I think she thought that I had already known, but I didn't," he said.

Doug Edwards said he had been in shock up until that point, showing little emotion, but he remembered the call from his aunt "kind of being the last straw."

He started to cry for the first time, but he doesn't remember sharing the information about his mother with those around him right away.

"There wasn't a lot of good news going on, and that just wasn't going to make it any better," he explained.

Two men in the group had younger brothers who died that day in the World Trade Center. Doug Edwards and his co-workers stayed up late that night, drinking and watching the news in his apartment.

"It was not a good day," he said. "It was a bad day."

FAMILY REMEMBERS KAREN WAGNER

Kim Wagner was working in Grand Prairie, Texas, on Sept. 11 when a girlfriend called and told her to turn on the conference room TV. She first saw footage of New York, and then the screen flashed to the Pentagon near Washington.

"And of course it didn't sink in right away," she remembered.

When it did sink in that her sister, Karen, had recently been promoted and assigned to the Pentagon, Kim Wagner tried calling her. She soon learned that a casualty officer had informed her mother, Mattie, that Karen had been working in the area hit by Flight 77.

"From that point you're just kind of frozen in time," Kim Wagner said.

She kept calling her sister, hoping she'd somehow survived. She then began packing, preparing to drive to the nation's capital. But a close friend firmly told her she needed to be with her mother, who lived near San Antonio.

Kim Wagner went to her mother's and soon flew with her brother Warren to Washington, where they attended briefings three times a day, waiting for news about their sister.

It came on Saturday.

"We were informed to please be in one of those hotel rooms at 1500 hours on Saturday," she said.

A casualty officer -- a colonel who had known Karen Wagner -- and a chaplain confirmed that she had been killed. The siblings then changed gears, concerning themselves with their sister's personal affairs and preparing for her funeral.

As Kim Wagner packed up her sister's home in Alexandria, Va., she took special care to set aside personal items for her mother -- items such as Karen's bathrobe, "because it smelled like her."

Just before the first anniversary of 9/11, the casualty officer arranged a private meeting in Washington, D.C., with Kim and Warren, Kim's adult son Renee and Maj. John Thurman, who had been with Karen Wagner when she died.

Kim Wagner called the meeting "healing." She learned that her sister had not died immediately upon the plane's impact and had not died alone.

Thurman had been sitting two desks down from Karen Wagner when the plane hit. With fire and smoke consuming the room, he tried to lead her to an exit as she crawled behind him, grasping his belt. Eventually he noticed that she had fallen silent and released her grip.

"He walked us through the steps, and that was extremely important for me," Kim Wagner said.

She paused to compose herself before continuing to describe the meeting and how it helped her with "closure." Until then, she said, "I just in a strange way expected that she was going to call me, that it was a mistake."

For Kim Wagner, the meeting also revealed that her sister "was preparing for her potential demise" by praying as she tried to escape.

"That made me feel better," Kim Wagner said, "knowing that she wasn't by herself."

WAGNER 'LOVED GOD ... LOVED MANKIND'

Karen Wagner, the third of four children, graduated from Judson High School in Converse, Texas, in 1979. She met her future husband, George Hardison, in 1980, as a freshman at Angelo State University in Texas. She followed him to Las Vegas and transferred to UNLV.

According to an alumni profile that appeared in UNLV Magazine in 2002, Karen Wagner received a bachelor's degree in business administration in 1982. She later earned a master's degree in health services administration at the San Antonio campus of Webster University, based in Missouri.

Little is known about Karen Wagner's time in Las Vegas, but a spokesman for the women's basketball team at UNLV said reports that she once played on the team are incorrect.

Karen Wagner was commissioned in the Army after graduating from UNLV and was married in 1984. She gave birth to a daughter, Saundra, in February 1987 at Fort Lee in Virginia, but the infant had serious medical conditions that led to her death in April 1988. Karen Wagner and Hardison divorced about a year later.

When Karen Wagner died at age 40, she was working as a human resources officer in the Army's medical branch.

She is buried with her daughter, and across from her father, Bill, also an Army veteran, at Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery in San Antonio.

Kim Wagner said she wants others to know that her sister "was a professional person, one of direction, lots of determination, but more importantly, that she loved God and she loved mankind.

"She was someone that one would want to model themselves after because she had such a big heart and was caring."

When a second high school opened in the Converse area in 2005, it was named after Karen Wagner, and Wagner High School holds a ceremony every year to honor her. This year's ceremony is scheduled for Friday , and her three siblings plan to attend. Kim Wagner, seven years older than her sister, also plans to visit the cemetery that weekend.

"I'm so thankful that I had a sister and I had a sister like her," she said.

She will spend Sept. 11 with her mother, who still lives in the San Antonio area. Mattie Wagner doesn't want to give any more interviews about her fallen daughter, saying, "I just can't handle this anymore."

EDWARDS' SISTER: 'IT WAS HER TURN TO DIE'

Jane Gollan had lived at sister Barbara Edwards' condominium in Summerlin for a few months in 2000 before moving to Washington state in the spring of 2001.

After Edwards broke her arm, Gollan was planning to help her make the eastern trip. Before Gollan could purchase the plane ticket, however, Edwards called to say a friend would assist her.

"Were it not for that, I would have been on that plane with her," said Gollan, now 67 and living in Yuma, Ariz.

But Gollan believes it wasn't her time to go and now looks at events in summer 2001 as signs that it was her sister's time. For instance, Edwards took a trip to Michigan, where she saw her parents and many old friends.

"Everybody got to say goodbye, and nobody knew it," Gollan said.

She last saw Edwards there and said their mother uncharacteristically cried when the two sisters left: "It's sort of like she knew, you know, that this would be the last time they would see her."

Gollan said Edwards also unwittingly said her final goodbye to all those she knew at the wedding in Connecticut.

Edwards had planned to leave the East Coast the weekend before Sept. 11, Gollan said, but the Flaggs encouraged her to cancel that reservation and fly with them two days later. Ret. Rear Adm. Bud Flagg, a decorated fighter pilot in the Vietnam War, had spent 21 years flying Boeing 767s for American Airlines.

When Gollan heard that Edwards' plane had gone down, she told relatives that her sister, known for being late, probably had missed the flight. But she knew in her heart that Flagg, with his Navy background, would have ensured their punctuality.

Gollan said her sister carried a cellphone, but records showed she didn't use it that morning. Gollan suspected Edwards hadn't charged the battery, but she also wondered how her sister would have decided which loved one to call.

Gollan doesn't fault the Flaggs for changing her sister's travel plans. She believes it was God's doing.

"It was her turn to die, and it wasn't mine, and I believe that," Gollan said. "If you look at it any other way, you could upset yourself a whole lot."

EDWARDS 'MADE A LOT OF FRIENDS'

Barbara Edwards was born in Germany and was about 10 when her mother married Jack Vander Baan in 1953 in Grand Rapids, Mich.

Her mother, Lissy, was a native of Germany, and Vander Baan was from Holland. Both became U.S. citizens.

The couple met while Vander Baan was serving in the U.S. Army in Germany. They were married for 54 years before Lissy's death in February 2008. Vander Baan, 84, has since remarried and lives in Wayland, Mich.

Barbara graduated from Kelloggsville High School in Grand Rapids in 1961, later studied at Western Michigan University and spent time in Quebec studying French.

"Barb was always ready to go some place and do something," her stepfather said.

She also lived in New York, Connecticut, New Jersey and Indiana before moving to Nevada.

"Wherever she lived, she made a lot of friends, and she never lost them," he said.

Barbara Edwards was married for more than two decades before she and her husband divorced in the early 1990s.

Doug Edwards remembers living across the street from the Flaggs, who had two sons, in the mid-'70s in Ridgefield, Conn.

He said his mom let her sons figure things out on their own and taught them to take care of themselves. Starting around their junior high school years, for example, the three boys were expected to do their own laundry.

"It was kind of cool, actually," Doug Edwards said. "I guess that's why I don't mind doing laundry now."

Barbara Edwards had two others sons: Mike, now 43, and Scott, now 38.

During the boys' younger years, Barbara Edwards was a stay-at-home mom. She drove them to a multitude of sporting events and was a great cook. Among Doug Edwards' favorites was her lasagna.

While she was caring and affectionate, and rarely in a bad mood, Doug Edwards agreed that his mother had a problem with punctuality.

"She was more not on time than on time," he conceded.

Barbara Edwards tried working as a real estate agent for a while, but she found that she loved teaching.

Gollan said Bud Flagg encouraged Barbara Edwards to come teach in Las Vegas. The Flaggs, both 62 when they died, had lived part-time in Las Vegas since 1993, according to friends and neighbors.

TEACHERS SHARE STORIES ABOUT EDWARDS

Barbara Edwards taught German at the Las Vegas Academy during the 1997-1998 school year, before Palo Verde High School teacher Gail Fahy lured her away.

She taught French and German the next three years at Palo Verde. Fahy, head of the school's foreign language department, said Edwards built up the German program at Palo Verde and would have taught only German classes had she returned for the 2001-2002 school year.

The two women developed a strong friendship during the time they worked together.

"I call her my best friend, but I'm sure a lot of other people did, too," Fahy said during a recent interview at a Summerlin coffee shop, not far from Palo Verde.

Fahy said the two stayed in their classrooms for hours after school ended each day, until they finally put their heads together and figured out ways to get their work done faster.

"If I learned anything, it was not to take work so seriously that you don't have a life," Fahy said. "She taught me that. Life's too short."

On June 8, 2001, the two attended a dinner party at a friend's home to celebrate the last day of the school year. Fahy's son was performing with his band that night, and the pair and another Palo Verde teacher headed off to see the concert.

Math teacher Patti Habermas drove, with Edwards sitting in the front passenger seat and Fahy in back as they traveled south on Rampart Boulevard.

As they entered the intersection at Charleston Boulevard, another vehicle made a left turn into the driver's door of their vehicle. Edwards was the most seriously injured, with a broken right arm. She and Fahy rode in an ambulance together, holding hands, to University Medical Center.

"Even with a broken arm and all this trauma, she's still laughing and making everybody else laugh," Fahy recalled.

Despite multiple doctor visits that summer, Edwards' arm "didn't seem to be healing," Fahy said.

After Edwards decided to take a leave of absence and travel back East, she assured Fahy she would return in time to celebrate Fahy's Sept. 11 birthday.

At 8:20 that morning, Edwards departed from Washington Dulles International Airport on Flight 77, bound for Los Angeles, with the Flaggs and five hijackers. Vander Baan said he has seen a black-and-white security video that showed his stepdaughter boarding Flight 77 with Dee Flagg.

The terrorists took over the plane at 8:54 a.m. and reversed its route back toward Washington.

Fahy would not celebrate her birthday that day, nor would she ever again celebrate on Sept. 11.

This year, she will spend her 65th birthday singing Gabriel Faure's Requiem with the Desert Chorale at First Presbyterian Church to commemorate the 10th anniversary of 9/11.

EDWARDS' MEMORIAL AT PALO VERDE

Barbara Edwards' remains were buried in a small country cemetery in Hopkins, Mich., where her mother later was buried.

"Someday I will be buried there, too," Vander Baan said.

In 2003, a memorial was dedicated to her at the southeast corner of Palo Verde's soccer field -- in the same spot where she enjoyed watching games. The memorial contains the inscription "We will never forget" in English, French and German.

The school library also displays a tribute to Edwards, and Palo Verde holds a ceremony in her honor each year around Sept. 11.

Doug Edwards said his mom would be flattered: "I know for sure she's very grateful that people haven't forgotten about her."

Contact reporter Carri Geer Thevenot at cgeer@reviewjournal.com or 702-384-8710.