9-11: What it really means to never forget

Joan King reluctantly made her way to the footbridge, not far from her home’s back door, to have her picture taken.

“I don’t want this to be about me,” she said, as she slowly walked toward the golf course.

But she let the amiable if tattooed young woman from the newspaper talk her into posing. As if all of this all wasn't uncomfortable enough, Joan took a fall along the path., drawing the attention and aid of by some concerned golfers.

Still, Joan brushed herself off and kept her word.

This, after all, was about her son, Andrew. And the bridge on the Geneva Golf Club course, built to look like the fabled one the 18th hole at St. Andrew's in Scotland, was designed by Joan's ex-husband. It's there in memory of Andrew.

The last time Joan saw her handsome son was when he dropped her off at the airport in Philadelphia. Inside the terminal, he joked about buying her a crown, one of those cardboard ones from a fast-food restaurant.

"I should have taken him up on the offer," said King.

That was six unsettling years ago.

Andrew King turned 42 the summer of 2001. He had just made partner at with Cantor Fitzgerald, which had its headquaters in the World Trade Center. Then came September 11. That's all you have to say anymore. And the sad fact of the matter is that as someone working on Wall Street, King was one of the intended targets, a symbol reduced to rubble for the sake of somebody's cause.

Life had been pretty damn good for King, a fair-haired guy with Kennedy-like looks. He grew up in upscale St. Charles, Illinois, prepped at Elgin Academy, a school for rich kids, albeit one in a blue collar neighborhood. He graduated from North Carolina and was there close to the time Michael Jordan played basketball.

Back then Andrew had a reputation as a free spirit, and "he's up in a tree in his yearbook picture. The kids called him Sky King," said Fred Fletcher, who coached Andrew on the tennis team and who was his math teacher back in high school.

King, was indeed the prom king for the Class of 1977: "He liked to have a good time. But he would follow through with things he promised to do, which is rare for a teenager," said Carolyn Selke. Selke is a mother and certified public accountant now in the Chicago suburbs and was the prom queen.

Andrew came back to the Chicago area after college and landed a job at the Board of Trade. Like many young men, Andrew wanted to be a pro athlete at one point, recalled Joan, whose son loved golf and was "a gorgeous skier He learned at a resort his father, Wesley, an architect, designed up in Michigan."

A ski trip was how Andrew met his wife. Back in 1985, Andrew and his buddy spotted a group of women, also from Chicago, getting into a limousine at the Denver airport. The guys managed to talk their way into the vehicle, and Andrew hit it off with Judy, who would become his bride and the mother of his three children.

The couple wound up in Philadelphia, then in Princeton, N.J., and Andrew landed a job in New York City. He was in the World Trade Center the first time terrorists attacked the building and tried to make his way downstairs with the golf clubs he had in his office, Joan recalled.

As if that weren't proof he was crazy about the game, in the summer of 2000 Andrew took his family and friends on a trip to the legendary Old St. Andrew's in Scotland.

Sure, he was leading a charmed life. But like many people these days, he kept really long hours,, waking up around 5:30 a.m. every working day to head into the city, where he would often stay well into the night, entertaining clients.

"He would get a car to take him home, and he would call during his ride. Sometimes we would talk for a half-hour or so," said Joan.

Andrew kept lots of friends, and her son's memorial service out East drew more than 1,000 people, she recalled.

“He was a leader,” Joan said, "but he did have a bad habit of always being late. People would start asking, 'Where is
Andrew?' But when he would walk in the door, everything would be alright."

Six years on, alright is a relative term.

"You have to live through it. The blow softens as time goes by, but I miss him every day. It's been difficult, but you go
with what's been given you. I'm hanging in there," said Joan.

And sometimes, when the mood hits, when the memories flood, "I sit on thethe bridge to have a visit with my son," said Joan.