Remembering Thelma Cuccinello

Thelma, aged 71, loved to travel.  Her daughter, Cheryl O'brien, was a travel agent and had booked a trip for her on American Airlines 11.  Thelma was going to visit her sister and brother-in-law in California.  
She had taken up golf at age 70, and planned to spend some time on the links during her visit.  


She was skilled at making quilts and all sorts of crafts, and left many such mementoes behind with family members and friends.   


Christmas was Thelma Cuccinello's favorite holiday, a time when she could deck her house in Wilmot, N.H., with all the ornaments and decorations she had made over the years. And not just her house. Her eldest daughter, Cheryl O'Brien, who lives in Bedford, Mass., recently opened a box of Christmas wreaths, only to realize that every one had been made by her mother. "She made the skirt for our Christmas tree, the decoration for our mantlepiece," Mrs. O'Brien said. "She and Dad would go nuts at 
Christmas."


You can read her profile as shown on the Chicago Tribune HERE.  If ever there was a "perfect" mother and grandmother, I'd say Thelma was such a person.


This is a part of Project 2,996.  For links to more tributes, go to the Project 2,996 website.  

Remembering Linda C. Lee; she lived a joyful, fulfilled life.

After reading the comments on previous tributes I have done, I couldn't possibly miss the opportunity of doing another one.  I randomly picked a World Trade Center victim, began what I figured would be a hopeless search for information, and struck gold.  For more tributes of the 9/11 victims, go to Project 2,996.

First of all, I found a tribute with her picture on the World Trade Center Memorial site.  Ms. Lee, age 34, was a senior associate at a financial services firm.  On September 11, 2,001, she just happened to be attending a technology conference at the trade center.    

She listened with her fullest attention," said Tiffany Norwood, her friend since kindergarten. "She wanted to know exactly what was going on in your life. 

Ms. Lee had a love of adventure, Ms. Norwood said. In high school, the two girls would sneak off from their homes in Camp Springs, Md., to New York for the weekend. As young women, they would sweet talk New York cabbies into letting them drive the taxi. 

"She had an amazing ability to make and nurture friendships," said Stacey Harris, another close friend. "She made you feel like you were her only friend." 

I found the following words left by friends at her online obituary site: 

"I met Linda on a consulting assignment at Morgan Stanley. She had a good heart and she was very giving. Working with her was challenging. I found her to be very bright, patient, tolerant and understanding. I was at Morgan Stanley when she left the firm to further her career. I am stunned and so very saddened by this. Why God took such a wonderful person from us is something I will never understand." 

"Linda was an exceptional person with a generosity of spirit that was beyond words. I was always in awe of the way she approached life. She was excited to be alive and be in New York City and see and do and just experience. I think we ate in every restaurant in the East Village.
Linda saw the beauty and joy in things that most people would never notice. And when you were around her, you couldn’t help but see what she saw. And she always saw the good in people, unless of course, those people insulted her friends." 


I was glad to see that there is a memorial scholarship in her name.

Project 2,996

To understand Project 2,996, you need to go to THIS LINK and catch the vision its creator had in mind.  The idea is to make sure that the very ordinary people who died as a result of the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001, be remembered in a positive way.  
I did not choose to do a new tribute this year, perhaps because of laziness; although I tell myself that after ten years, it gets harder to find sufficient information on the Internet about these people to give them a proper tribute.  If I didn't have such a very busy day today, I might perhaps take the time to try and find another person to whom I could give tribute, even at this late date.    
However, I'd like to give you the links to all the tributes I have done for this project.  Keep in mind these are people who got up and went to work on what seemed like an ordinary day.  It could happen to any of us on any "ordinary" day. 
You might want to read the comments on these entries; some of the friends and relatives left comments thanking me for the tributes to their loved ones.  That made it worth the effort. 


Christopher Sullivan


Derek James Statkevisuc


Veronique Bowers

One more thing about Project 2,996

If you would like to do a tribute to one of the 9/11 victims but you don't have your own blog, there is a site all set up and ready for you.

Just sign up at Project 2,996, and you'll receive an email telling you who your person is. Go to Google and find out everything you can about the person designated for you and use what you can.

You'll find the instructions on how to post HERE.

Then you'll be able to go to the blog "Friends of Project 2,996" and add your tribute. Although it's three days early, there are already some tributes there.

Come on, blogging community

If you had lost someone back on September 11, 2001, wouldn't you want their name to live on? Wouldn't you like to be able to Google your loved one's name and find out somebody had done a tribute to him or her?

I participated in this project once before, and I'm doing it again. It isn't so hard, really.

What if it had been your son, your daughter, your husband or wife?

Check out Project 2,996. Less than a third of the people lost on that terrible day have someone remembering them this year.

Project 2,996.

Project 2,996

I took part in the Project 2,006 tribute in 2006, in my old AOL journal. I did a tribute to Christopher Sullivan, and I intend to repeat that one this year.

I also volunteered to have a random name from the list of 9/11 victims assigned to me this time.

Using Google, I was able to get some information on Christopher Sullivan. I recall that some people doing tributes couldn't find anything at all on their assigned name; but at least the name was put out there so it won't be forgotten.

Two relatives of Christopher's have stumbled upon my little tribute and left comments, which is pretty heartwarming.

If you have a blog, why not sign up for this project?

Project 2,996