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Air Force Child

Nina Bell was every inch a fighter pilot's daughter — slender, athletic and looking even taller than her 5 feet, 8 inches. Born in the Netherlands, the first stop in a nomadic Air Force childhood, she grew up confident, smart, "the It girl," as a friend once put it. A bachelor's degree in business administration from the University of Colorado at Boulder led her to become a manager of information systems and, most recently, into project management.

But to her friends and family, there was also the side that was not all business. Ms. Bell's notebook had a bumper sticker that read, "Mean People Suck." With her brother, Lowell Bell, 40, she kept up a private banter, sometimes based on the dim Canadian duo, the Mackenzie brothers, from the 1970's television show, "Second City TV." "Hey, hoser," she would call him.

This September, Ms. Bell, 39, had settled in Manhattan, in a new apartment on the Upper East Side and in a new job as a project manager with Marsh & McLennan. In an e-mail message to her friend Lorraine Davis on Monday, Sept. 10, at 2 p.m., Ms. Bell wrote, "I am so very happy."

Profile published in THE NEW YORK TIMES on December 22, 2001.