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Shelley Marshall had only two days left in her office on the Pentagon's southwest side before moving across the building.

On Sept. 11, she dropped her 3-year-old son and 20-month-old daughter at the Pentagon's day-care center near her office.

Around 9 a.m., she called her husband, Donn Marshall, to ask if he knew the World Trade Center had been hit by a plane; that was the last he heard from her.

When he was told the Pentagon had been hit, he rushed there and ran first to the day-care center to find his children. As soon as he saw them alive and unhurt, he knew his wife was among the victims.

"If she was OK, she would have been there," he said.

A no-nonsense woman with a take-charge personality, Marshall had worked as a budget analyst in the comptroller's office of the Defense Intelligence Agency for three years.

But she had other talents too. On Halloween, Shelley and Donn Marshall would bring together friends for a black-tie dinner at a remote bed-and-breakfast. "After dinner we would read ghost stories that we had written," Donn Marshall said.

"I miss her so much, and I keep thinking that she's standing behind me, in the blind spot between my shoulder blades, and I keep waiting for her touch."

Profile courtesy of THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE.