NEW YORK — His wife wouldn't be happy about it.

        But today Lynn Faulkner says he will walk into the hole where the World Trade Center used to stand because that is the only gravesite he has for her.

        “I can't get over the fact that we haven't gotten her remains back, and never will,” the Mason father and widower says. “I am going into that hole, to the bottom of that pit. That is the closest I'll get to a grave and her remains.”

        Wendy Faulkner, 47, was one of thousands trapped in the World Trade Center last year when the 110-story towers collapsed after terrorists crashed hijacked airliners into New York's tallest buildings.

Lynn Faulkner and his daughter Ashley, in a photo taken days after they learned Wendy Faulkner was lost in the World Trade Center disaster. (Enquirer file photo) | ZOOM |

        Today, as part of an anniversary memorial, families of those victims have been invited to descend to the lowest part of the trade center site and put roses in a vase that will later be part of a permanent memorial.

        “I want to put flowers down there and pray over her gravesite,” Mr. Faulkner says. “But I understand that my wife would be a little put out by me. She believed that when you die, your spirit goes to be with God. I'm sure I can say with certain confidence, that is how she would see it.”

        The Faulkners' two daughters, Loren, 20, and Ashley, 14, will not be accompanying their father into the hole. Mr. Faulkner says it is their choice and he respects it.

        “Ashley said, 'No, I don't want to go.' Just like that,” he says. “I didn't know (I would go) myself until three or four weeks ago. Our feelings went completely across the spectrum.”

        Since last year, Mr. Faulkner says, he and his daughters have been trying to come to terms with “being three-quarters of a family.” He says they are struggling with the simplest tasks, such as going to the grocery store.

        “(We) would just as soon stop eating,” he says. “It's just not worth the hassle.”

Wendy Faulkner

        But as soon as those thoughts come into his head, he says it isn't long before he can see the reproachful look on his wife's face.

        “It is easy for me to talk about Wendy. She was a beautiful person,” he says. “But I don't even indulge myself, that my grief is worse than anyone else's.”

        Ms. Faulkner was working in the same office on the 104th floor of Tower Two with two other Cincinnati-area residents — Doug Cherry and Kathy Salter — who also were unable to escape.

        All three worked for Aon Corp., which lost 175 employees in the attacks. Aon, a risk management and insurance brokerage firm headquartered in Chicago, has asked all employees in each time zone to observe a moment of silence at 10:29 a.m., the moment of the tower's fall.

        In Cincinnati, a candle will be lit in the conference room.

        “We will have lunch in and be together. It has been with us every day,” says Cathy Evans, insurance relationship specialist. “The word Aon is Gaelic for unity. We are a family who lost family members, and we miss them.”

        Ms. Faulkner was born in Japan, raised in the West Indies and moved to the United States at the age of 14.

        The daughter of Christian missionaries, she took it upon herself to send boxes of books, candy, clothes and toys every month to impoverished children in the Philippines, Haiti and Africa. Her only pay came in the form of thank-you letters.

        Although she lived in Mason, Ms. Faulkner worked in Chicago as an Aon vice president. She had come to the World Trade Center for a meeting. From her co-workers, Mr. Faulkner says, he knows a little about what happened to his wife on Sept. 11.

        He says that after the plane hit, his wife and two other women rushed to an express elevator, but it was jammed with people and only one of the women was able to get in. From there, she might have made for a stairway. But the building collapsed before she could get out.

        “There is a cruel irony,” Mr. Faulkner says. “Wendy hated tall buildings. That really bothers me.”

        He says she used to complain about being in a high rise office — usually a perk for senior managers — and was excited about a new job that was going to put her on the sixth floor of an office building in downtown Chicago.

        “They asked her if that was all right. She was thrilled. Told them she couldn't be happier,” he says. “She said to me once, "I like the job, I like the people, but I hate being in that damn building. What if there is a fire?' ”

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