http://www.boston.com/dailynews/360/nation/Widow_receives_wedding_ring_of:.shtml

Widow receives wedding ring of husband killed in Flight 93 crash in Pennsylvania

By Associated Press, 12/26/2001 00:01

PORTOLA VALLEY, Calif. (AP) After her husband died on the last of the doomed Sept. 11 flights, Dorothy Garcia told FBI agents the only thing she wanted was his wedding ring recovered from the wreckage.

They told her they weren't likely to find it at the Pennsylvania crash site of United Airlines Flight 93. But last week, two agents brought her his wallet and the ring, which she knew by its inscription: ''All my love, 8-2-69.''

''It was a miracle,'' she said.

Andrew Garcia, 62, was returning from a business trip when the plane was hijacked en route from Newark, N.J., to San Francisco. Several passengers said in phone calls before the crash that they planned to fight back against the hijackers.

''We're trying to just remember that my husband as well as every single passenger on that flight was a hero, and thanking them for their patriotism,'' Dorothy Garcia said.

The couple met in the 1960s when they both worked for United Airlines, and they ran a start-up company at the time of Andrew Garcia's death.

Dorothy Garcia knew the first Christmas without him would be difficult. Little things troubled her, like deciding who would sit at the head of the dinner table where he once sat.

She now wears her husband's wedding ring on her middle finger on her right hand. It seems right, she said.

''Because he was the center of my life.''

-- Anonymous, December 26, 2001