Project 2996 - Remembering Betsy Martinez

Back in 2006, I stumbled upon a blog called Project 2996, whose sole purpose was to gather bloggers to write memorial profiles for everyone who had died in the September 11th attacks. You could email the organizer and were assigned a name. On September 11, 2006 everyone posted their profiles. The idea was (quoted directly from the blog), "(e)ach year we will honor them by remembering their lives, and not by remembering their murderers."

I signed up that year and wrote a profile. In the years since then, that particular blog no longer exists. Which, unfortunately, means my tribute profile no longer exists, either. Which, if you click on that link above, you'll see is a pretty common theme. Sadly, I don't even remember the name of the person I was assigned.

On Saturday, I participated in the Steven Siller Tunner to Towers 5K. Steven Siller was an off-duty fire fighter who lost his life in the attack. The race benefits the Tunnel to Towers Foundation, which (among other things) builds mortgage-free homes for catastrophically injured service members. The homes are custom-designed for the person receiving the home. Each race participant chose a badge of one of the FDNY members who was killed that day. I chose Captain Timothy Stackpole, whose Project 2996 tribute can be found here.

I did my own research on Capt Stackpole, and that prompted me to write a new profile for Project 2996. I randomly selected Betsy Martinez off the long list of individuals who no longer have blog tributes. Here is her story.

Betsy Martinez
Betsy was a 33-year-old accounts manager at Cantor Fitzgerald. Widowed at the age of 23, Betsy had two daughters. Christina was 14 and Ariel was 11 at the time. She and her childhood friend (as well as her friend's mother) enjoyed creating holiday rituals for the two girls, including apple picking in the fall. Betsy was engaged and planned on moving somewhere upstate, out of the city. She enjoyed shopping at craft stores and her job at Cantor Fitzgerald.

One of my former bosses was actually employed at Cantor on September 11th and knew many of the people who lost their lives that day. The information I found about Betsy suggested that she really enjoyed the close-knit group of people she worked with.

Never Forget.