Common Folk Using Common Sense

2,996 is a tribute to the victims of 9/11.
On September 11, 2006, 2,996 volunteer bloggers
will join together for a tribute to the victims of 9/11.
Each person will pay tribute to a single victim.
We will honor them by remembering their lives,
and not by remembering their murderers.
The entire list of tributes can be found here:
http://www.madmommajen.com/?p=3
http://bamapachyderm.com/2996-the-911-tributes/
http://www.onebigdog.net/2996-tributes/

Sandra Conaty Brace was born Sandra Jolane Swofford in Bemidji, Minnesota on November 18, 1940. She was the only daughter of Frank and Hazel (Selness) Swofford. Her parents were of Norwegian descent. Sandy always seemed pleased that her mother found her middle name from a popular daytime serial radio program character of the time.

Shortly after her birth, Sandy’s parents move to the Seattle, Washington area where they both became defense plant workers employed by Boeing. They worked on the B-17 bomber aircraft assembly line until November 1945.

Sandy’s father (and grandfather) both died tragically and unexpectedly — but separately when she was about 11 years old. In the early 1950’s, Sandy’s mother moved to the Wichita, Kansas area, re-married and was again employed by Boeing in the Boeing B-52 strategic bomber aircraft assembly facility there.

Sandy graduated from Wichita, Kansas, High School in 1960.

In the early 1970’s, she returned to Bemidji, Minnesota where her mother and stepfather were then living. She soon went to work for the Simplot Company in Crookston, Minnesota, about 75 miles west of Bemidji, and had positions with them in personnel and labor relations.

In 1986, Sandy received a separation package from Simplot and within a year was working as an administrative assistant with the Idaho Department of Social Services and Mental Health. She worked for the State of Idaho until she moved to Staten Island, New York in late summer 1992.

Sandy moved to Staten Island in 1992 and after a short career in the financial publishing field, began employment in 1994 with Johnson & Higgins as a personnel specialist, a field she knew well. Following a corporate merger in 1998, she began with a subsidiary of Marsh and was an administrative assistant.

Sandy was an ardent reader, a chronic watcher of television, possessed an uncommonly powerful and formidable intelligence, loved cats, and was a writer of poetry and stories.

Sandy lived in Stapleton, Staten Island, and took the 7:40 a.m. ferry across the harbor each day to her job at Risk Insurance Solutions, where she was an administrative assistant. She shared her house with a husband, David, and 25 cats. Well, maybe not exactly 25. “It’s probably more,” Mr. Brace said, “But I lose count.”

Dinner for the cats always caused a minor food riot, but even a riot can have its own poetry. Mrs. Brace placed cat food on seven plates on the kitchen and dining room floors. The groups of cats arrayed around each plate formed a furry constellation of stars, with the plates at the centers and the cats as the coronas.

On Monday, Sept. 10, 2001, Mrs. Brace, 60, took the day off from work to do chores, fix the carpeting on the stairs that had been torn by a cat, and watch “Judge Judy” on television. Mr. Brace came home at 5 p.m.

He asked her: “Why don’t you take another vacation day tomorrow?” She replied, “No, I think I’ll go to work.”

“And that’s what happened,” Mr. Brace said. “That’s what happened.”

Sandra died the very next day, Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2001, in the World Trade Center in New York City. She is one of 2996 that died that day. Five years ago today.

When we say “never forget” we have to start by remembering.

Sandra Conaty Brace, Sept. 11, World Trade Center, New York, 2996

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