A reader sends along the tragic obituary of an Army civilian analyst whose wife died at the Pentagon on 9/11:

Kenneth Edelle Foster, 51, a retired Army sergeant whose wife lost her life at the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, died Oct. 10 at his home in Arlington, Tex., of pulmonary fibrosis and congestive heart failure. He had lived in the Washington area since 1972 and moved back to North Texas, where he grew up, in 2003.

A civilian Army policy analyst, Mr. Foster was working in his office in the Hoffman Building in Alexandria on Sept. 11 when he got word that a plane had hit the Pentagon, where his wife, Sandra Nadine Hill, had worked for 25 years. He jumped into his truck and raced toward the billowing black cloud he could see in the distance, going the wrong way on Interstate 95.

He ended up spending nearly two days and nights helping rescue efforts while desperately searching for his wife. Because he wasn’t supposed to be there, a woman gave him T-shirts from the Salvation Army and the Red Cross to wear so he could blend in with the rescuers…

Foster sank into depression, tried to commit suicide on his favorite holiday, Thanksgiving, and attempted to rebuild his life by moving away from Washington and launching a college scholarship fund in his wife’s memory.

Mr. Foster’s friends and family were fully aware of the seriousness of his lung disease, which got worse after he lost his wife, but they don’t believe his illness caused his death.

“He could have got over his physical ailments, I believe,” his mother said, “but he just didn’t want to live. He died of a broken heart. We all know that.”

Read the whole thing here . Says my reader: “Makes you feel enraged when Kerry says 9/11 didn’t change him much at all.”

Exactly.

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