Two Friends Share Odd Connection to 9/11, Bin Laden’s Death

Sarasota County School Board member Jane Goodwin met with longtime friend Roberta Caraceni for breakfast on May 2. The two don't see each other very often, and that morning as they met over coffee and discussed the news that , they marveled at a historic coincidence.

On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, Goodwin, who was not a board member at the time, was helping to stage the press at Emma E. Booker Elementary School because President George W. Bush was scheduled to make an appearance.

Caraceni, who was helping with the event, and Goodwin were sitting in the media center with the press photographers and cameras behind them. Before Bush entered the room, Caraceni got a call from her husband, who said a plane crashed into the World Trade Center.

Goodwin imagined it was nothing more than a small plane or maybe a helicopter.

Just before Bush entered the room, many of the national press got up and left. “The staff that we had so carefully flushed along with the news media, they got up and walked out,” Goodwin recalled. “And I thought, ‘gosh this was rude.’ "

Little did Goodwin know the significance at the time. As Bush finished listening to the elementary students read "The Pet Goat," he was faced with the news that the United States of America was under attack. 

Goodwin then headed to downtown Sarasota for coffee and to go to church. On the radio she was getting snippets of information about the attack, but the significance of that day’s event had not sunk in.

As she drove back to her home in Venice, she said she was listening to Peter Jennings on the radio when she realized she was at the school when the President of the United States learned his country was under attack.

When she got home, the national news became personal. “I got a phone a call. I learned [that] two friends were on the flights that hit the World Trade Center,” Goodwin said.

One was on American Airlines Flight 11 from Boston to LAX. The other friend was on United Airlines Flight 175, which was also from Boston on the way to LAX.

Goodwin said she went from being elated that the president was in Sarasota to a moment of personal anguish.

“It went from being a very positive high time and talking about education to being the downward despair in a 24-hour period,” she said. "I felt almost every emotion that I could experience.”

At their May 2 breakfast, just as in the days after 9/11, it was hard for Goodwin to focus as she talked to Caraceni. They couldn’t believe they were together the day America was attacked and the day the world learned Bin Laden had been killed.

“I get chills just thinking about it,” Goodwin said.