When Dick McCloskey would be up in his plane for his aerial photography business, he felt especially close to his daughter Katie.
“When I am flying, I always say I have a tailwind — Katie’s angel wings pushing me along,” Dick once told me.
Katie McCloskey, a 1994 Adams High graduate, died during the 9/11 terrorist attacks 20 years ago today. She was just 25.
She was at her job on the 97th floor of the World Trade Center’s north tower when the first plane hit. Her remains were never found.
Katie loved living in New York, loved her job as a computer help-desk technician and loved the view out her window that seemed to go on forever. She had even taken selfie of herself in her office and with the Statue of Liberty in the background. She was smiling away.
She always had a great smile — it was voted the best in her class at Adams, where she played volleyball and tennis. She later graduated from Indiana University.
Although 700 miles away from her roots, Katie still had tons of friends back in South Bend and was scheduled to come home on Sept. 12 for a friend’s wedding. If only she could have left a few days earlier.
To make our community’s connection to 9/11 even more tragic, Kathy Hawk Nicosia, a 1965 Adams graduate, was a flight attendant on the plane from Boston that hit the north tower. She and her family had moved away after Kathy had graduated but like Katie, she was one of our own.
Kathy had flown for American Airlines for 32 years. “We all accept certain risks,” Larry Hawk, one of Kathy’s younger brothers, said. “Even Kathy did as a flight attendant. But how could you ever expect this?”
One has to wonder what their final moments were like — those two bright and successful women from the same high school in South Bend, Indiana.
Katie McCloskey would be 45 now had she survived. The third of Dick and Anne McCloskey’s four children, she was nicknamed Catastrophe Kate for her endearing clumsiness and for always being the kid who got caught doing something ornery while others skated free. She really had everything going for her.
Even though I never met Katie, she is the one I think about most on the 9/11 anniversaries. Maybe you do, too.
Not long after her death, her family set up a memorial scholarship fund in her name. Her dad and siblings also got tattoos in her honor.
Before Dick McCloskey died in 2014, he was able to meet Katelynne Hillebrand — whom everyone was also calling Katie — at her Granger home. This Katie was born on the afternoon of 9/11, just hours after Katie McCloskey had died.
Dick figured that Katie Hillebrand would always have a guardian angel. “I don’t think it was by accident that she was given that name,” he said.
I like to think that is true. We all need a little hope and faith after our world falls apart — like it did 20 years ago today.