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On the Way to Hollywood

How to comprehend the terrible symmetry that returned Candace Lee Williams to the place of her triumph, the World Trade Center? A 20-year-old student in the cooperative work-study program at Northeastern University in Boston, she toiled from January to June at Merrill Lynch as an intern on the 14th floor of 1 World Trade Center. "They loved her there so much, they took her out to dinner on her last day, and sent her home in a limousine," said her mother, Sherri. "Then they wrote Northeastern a letter saying, `Send us five more like Candace.'"

After finishing midterm exams in her June-to-December schedule, instead of returning home to Danbury, Conn., Ms. Williams agreed to meet her Northeastern roommate, Erin, at her home in California. "They'd rented a convertible preparing for the occasion, and Candace wanted her picture taken with that Hollywood sign," her mother said. So on Sept. 11 in Boston, Candace boarded Flight 11, which was then hijacked and sent crashing into the same trade center tower where she had worked. "The airline told us she was seated next to an 80-year-old grandmother on the plane," her mother said, "and I know that Candace was consoling that woman to the last."

Profile published in THE NEW YORK TIMES on November 30, 2001.