'Felt Like the Day After 9/11,' Says Lisa Frost's Dad

It was an eerie feeling. Tom Frost had been in this spot before. The TV crew at 9:30. The next crew at 11, and another, along with a newspaper and radio station after lunch.

It took him back in time, to Sept. 12, 2001, when the media clamored for information about him, his wife, Melanie, and their daughter Lisa.

It was Lisa who perished a day earlier when United Airlines Flight 175 was commandeered by terrorists and flown into the south tower of the World Trade Center complex.

On Monday the media attention was similar, but the emotions were different, just as the story was different. Instead of thousands dying at the towers, at the Pentagon and in Shanksville, PA, the story Monday that was responsible for Frost's déja vù was the death of one man, the one who took credit for murdering his daughter Lisa and 2,973 others.

Osama bin Laden.

Frost had been in front of the cameras before. He shepherded his daughter's legacy in the 9½ years since 9/11. And when he spoke of Lisa and bin Laden on Monday, the themes were largely the same but a decade removed. Bin Laden could die a hundred deaths and it still wouldn't bring back his daughter.

"I was asked today if this will change anything," Frost said. "I've tried this whole 10 years to let bin Laden know that he didn't disrupt my life. Yeah, we got a divorce, but it will stay the same now. We have a life to live tomorrow even though he's gone."

Frost has spent the years since Lisa's death in public service, something that he continues to press others to do. Public service was important to his daughter, who had been the valedictorian of hospitality administration at Boston University and prior to that had been salutatorian at Trabuco Hills High.

"I remember one of the first reporters on my porch said, 'If you could say anything to President Bush, what would it be?' " Frost recalled. "It would be don't go after people just because they have a turban on their head. Don't persecute someone just because they look like a terrorist.

"I don't want revenge. I want justice."

He's feeling that he's gotten it. And with the major news of bin Laden's death, Frost was in demand once again.

"Today felt like the day after 9/11," Frost said. "I was besieged by reporters. ... It was almost as big an event because there's crowds out in the street, the whole country is coming together."

Frost, a marathon runner, often takes a morning run past the marker memorializing his daughter at Lake Santa Margarita, but on Monday he did not. He had worked all night, he said, about 14½ hours as a Southern California Edison substation operator. He learned of bin Laden's death while at work from a Patch reporter. One of his colleagues told him he had been remarkably stoic when told the news. Frost said he figured he had to be with all the high-voltage lines around him.

"It didn't really hit me until this morning," Frost said Monday night of the moment that bin Laden's death finally made him feel like he was ready to break out the high-fives.

"It's great news," he said. "I'm really happy that he got taken out. I'm glad that he decided to go out in a blaze of glory and not put us through a trial. Had he been captured and brought in alive, it would have been a circus that would have almost glorified him.

"I was a little mystified why they buried him at sea. I realize ... it's so they wouldn't have a permanent burial site. If that's the reasoning, I totally agree with it."