This tribute is published on the anniversary of the terrorist attacks on New York, Washington and Pennsylvania on 11 September 2001, under the auspices of
Project 2996.
Jeffrey Dwayne Collman
Image: Family photograph, via
http://guy-at-judson.blogspot.com.
Source: Aurora Beacon News, Aurora IL 9-23-2001
Jeffrey Dwayne Collman, age 41, of Novato, California, formerly of Yorkville, IL, a flight attendant for American Airlines, died in the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in New York City at 8:45a.m. on Tuesday, September 11, 2001.
Jeffrey was a 1977 graduate of Yorkville High School in Yorkville, IL. Jeff was formerly employed, for over 10 years, at All-Steel in Montgomery, IL. He had then worked, for a brief time, at Cedar Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles, California before attaining his dream of being a flight attendant with American Airlines. Jeffrey loved his job and traveling to other countries around the world. He also loved to play and watch tennis. Jeff was a true people person who enjoyed visiting with and getting to know others. He became a flight attendant in 1997. Two years later, Jeff received the American Professional Flight Attendant Award and was considered a spirited and dedicated flight attendant. He liked to entertain children on his flights, and he was fond of playing tennis and traveling, friends said.
He is survived by his parents, Dwayne and Kay Collman of Yorkville, IL and Beverly Sutton of North Aurora, IL; his close companion, Keith Bradkowski of Novato, Ca; his brothers, Charles Collman of Fort Meyers, FL and Brian Collman of Las Vegas, NV; his sister, Brenda Sorenson of Aurora, IL; his step-brothers, Steve (Linda) Gengler of Yorkville, IL and Chuck (Lakshmi) Gengler of South Orange, NJ; his step-sister, Susan Bohan of California; a god-child, Marlene Wakelin; his half-sisters, Laura Kries of Brooklyn Park, MN, Caroline Sutton of Joliet, IL and Vickie Michel of Aurora, IL; several nieces and nephews, many loving aunts, uncles, cousins and friends. Jeffrey will also be missed by 100 other flight attendants.
He is preceded in death by his grandparents and his brother, Mark Allen Collman.
A memorial service was held on Monday, October 1, 2001 at the Immanuel Lutheran Church in Yorkville, IL with Pastor John Leaf officiating.
Father’s thoughts
Dwayne Collman's imagination gets the best of him when he thinks about the final minutes of his son's life on American Airlines Flight 11. He's filled with horror thinking about what the 41-year-old flight attendant from Yorkville went through as terrorists with knives steered the plane into the first World Trade Center tower. Collman knows his son received safety training in flight school, but he doubts it ever could have prepared him for the challenges he would face on the morning of Sept. 11. The grieving father is sure of one thing about his son, though, even if the details about his death are not certain:
"He would have fought like hell."
Jeffrey Collman, an American Airlines flight attendant for five years who grew up in Yorkville, died Tuesday morning when his hijacked plane, destined for Los Angeles, crashed into New York's famous landmark at 8:45 a.m. Though his body has not been recovered, his parents knew he was gone when he didn't call within a few hours after the tragedy. He had sent his stepmother, Kay, an e-mail the night before, telling her he would be flying from Boston to Los Angeles the next morning.
"I knew he was in that accident because every time there was something going on with airplanes, he would call and say, 'Hey, I'm all right,' " said Kay Collman. "So I knew that, when he didn't call, he was on that plane."
His parents [...] say Jeffrey Collman wanted to be a flight attendant because he loved to travel and meet people around the world. After working for years at Allsteel in Montgomery, he moved to California about five years ago to pursue that dream. Lifelong friend Dolores Humphrey, who went to school with Jeffrey Collman at all grade levels in Yorkville, said she feared he was killed when she heard the news because he often flew early-week flights from Boston to Los Angeles.
She said Collman never lost contact with his friends, even though his job took him around the world.
"Every time he got into town, he would call anyone he knew to meet for breakfast," said Humphrey, who last talked to Collman [5 days before 9/11]. "He would talk for a couple hours, then have to go fly somewhere else."
His stepmother said Jeffrey was the type of person who could "sit down next to someone on a plane and walk away knowing their life story." His father said Jeffrey loved tennis and flew around the world to watch professionals play. Kay Collman says her stepson never went anywhere meekly, and he loved his job so much that she's sure he didn't back down in the face of terror. "He took it seriously," she said, "and he would not have let anyone walk on him."
Humphrey said Jeffrey talked of flying even when he was a child, and his dream came true when American Airlines gave him a job. He was never afraid to fly, she said, always asserting that he was safer in the air than anyone on the ground. Collman's parents have begun to realize how their son died, and that he will always be remembered as a victim on one of the saddest days ever in the United States.
"It's completely different than just someone dying," Kay Collman said. "We'll have the pictures forever. We'll always see where he died. It's part of history."
Seattle Times, 17 September 2001
His partner, Keith Bradkowski, said Collman was courageous and safety-conscious. "He was so focused on safety," Bradkowski said. "If there was a threat, he would have done anything in his power to prevent it." He didn't normally work the Boston-to-Los Angeles route but made an exception to get vacation time at the end of the month. Collman grew up in Yorkville, Ill., and besides Bradkowski left behind four brothers and a sister. (Seattle Times)
Further information: the fate of
Flight 11.
Memorial to flight crew
Source:
www.maritimequest.com
Postscript
Blogger
Nathanael V. found out 5 years after 9/11, that Jeffrey Collman was a neighbour's grandson.
Sources
http://www.afacwa.org/memoriam/jeffreycollman.htm
http://www.historycommons.org/entity.jsp?entity=jeffrey_collman_1
http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=5767989
and as attributed above.
Norberto was a pastry chef from Elmhurst, working in the restaurant Windows on the World on the 106th and 107th floor of the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York. After the attacks, he was reported missing for a week until parts of a torso and an arm were found in a collapsed stairwell. DNA testing and finger printing reveiled that these were the remains of Norberto. It also invalidated claims that the image of the Falling Man was that of Norberto; this was another victim of 9/11 who will be the subject of a different tribute.
I can understand why Islam is looked at askance in certain quarters of the USA. However, I can only describe as lunacy the highly publicised event at a church in Florida where copies of the Koran are to be burned on Saturday, the 9th anniversary of 9/11. I wonder how the same people would feel about an event, hosted by native Americans, where copies of the Bible were burned. I am saying that because it was a warped interpretation of the Christian holy scripts which was used to justify the genocide of said ethnic group on the American continent. 9/11 is nine years ago, and I was under the impression that a healing process was in motion. However, the hubbub surrounding the Cordoba Centre in New York (that's that mosque near Ground Zero) has showed that nothing of the sort has taken place, which worries me.
I spent yesterday morning compiling a new tribute for my 9/11 commemoration on Saturday, one of two that will me my sole postings for Saturday, both scheduled for posting at 8.46 EDT (1.46pm BST). I reread the events that befell flight AA 11, which flew into the North Tower of the WTC in New York, as my victim was a flight attendant on that plane. The horror of that day came back to me in full - and I was not even directly or indirectly affected on a personal level. I still see the face of my colleague who rushed out from his lunchbreak at 1.46 pm to tell us a plane had flown into the Twin Towers in New York.
Today saw the 70th anniversary of the start of the London Blitz, and the beginning of the end of Hitler's bid to invade Great Britain. It has been suggested that if he had kept up his attacks on RAF airfields and aircraft, the RAF would have been on its knees in a week or so. The Blitz, which was sustained for weeks and months, claimed thousands of lives, and not just in London. In 1941, a bombing raid on the Glasgow suburb of Clydebank was devastating, and the raid on Coventry in 1940 infamous. After bombing with aircraft, the Nazis switched to bombing with flying bombs (the V1) and rockets (V2) in 1944 and 1945. Again, it is suggested that Hitler's Germany was within weeks or months of developing a jet-propelled aeroplane, which would easily have outflown the propellor-driven planes that the Allies were using.
