Local woman killed in Pa. crash 9-12-01
By KERRY HALL, Staff Writer News & Record
GREENSBORO -- It was supposed to be her last flight for the month.
Zip from Newark, N.J., to San Francisco and then return home to Greensboro to her two young children and husband Phil.
Sandy Bradshaw was simply doing her job when she walked onto United Flight 93 to work her shift as a flight attendant.
But terrorists took Bradshaw, 38, away from her family Tuesday.
Bradshaw, a part-time flight attendant and wife of a US Airways pilot, was among the 45 people aboard the Boeing 757 when it was hijacked and crashed in a grassy field about 80 miles from Pittsburgh.
Wednesday morning, her name was added to a partial list of people killed in the crash.
Back home in Greensboro, members of Westminster Presbyterian Church, the Bradshaws' church, met for a Tuesday evening service, where the Rev. Bob Henderson asked his congregation to pray for the family.
Before the service, friends had described Bradshaw as active in the church, and dedicated to the children's ministry. They called her friendly. Bubbly. Devoted to her daughter, Alex, 2, and son, Shenan, who was not yet 1.
Steve Webster of Greensboro knew the Bradshaws through a monthly church supper club. He was stunned when his wife called around noon and told him the news -- making the day's incomprehensible events all at once personal.
"It hits Greensboro," Webster said of the terrorist attacks centered on New York and Washington, D.C. "It may seem far away, but it's here."
Bradshaw's husband, Phil, at home with his family earlier in the day, said he still had hope Tuesday that his wife survived.
"I'm not giving up the fact that she might be alive," he said Tuesday, not commenting further.
One of four jetliners hijacked Tuesday, the Boeing 757 was believed to have been intended to hit presidential retreat Camp David, 85 miles from the crash site, according to Virginia congressman Rep. James Moran.
Before the plane crashed, an emergency dispatcher in Westmoreland County, Pa., received a cell phone call at 9:58 a.m. from a man who said he was a passenger locked in the bathroom of United Flight 93.
"We are being hijacked, we are being hijacked!" dispatch supervisor Glenn Cramer quoted the man as saying. The man told dispatchers the plane "was going down. He heard some sort of explosion and saw white smoke coming from the plane and we lost contact with him," Cramer said.
Before Tuesday's prayer service, Steve Webster recalled that the Bradshaws had missed last week's supper club, wanting to spend time together before the wife had to travel.
"She's a very striking person," Webster said. "Pretty. Friendly. Outgoing. A very doting, typical mother of two."
Staff writer Margaret Banks and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
-- Anonymous, September 12, 2001