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“The last picture she saw was one of me.”

Eleven-year old Graham Haggett never met his grandmother Sandra Lee Wright, but he knows her story well.

Wright was the Facilities Manager for Aon Corporation. Her offices were located in the south tower of the World Trade Center.

On September 11, 2001, she was killed along with 175 of her colleagues.

At the time, Graham was 10 weeks old.

He came to StoryCorps with his mother, Shelli Wright, to ensure that Sandra’s memory lives on.

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Recorded in Los Angeles, CA.

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Credits

Produced by Yasmina Guerda.

Facilitated by Alejandro De La Cruz.

Recorded in partnership with National September 11 Memorial & Museum.

Transcript

Click here to read the transcript for this story.

Interview transcript

Shelli Wright (SW): Somebody described her to me once as the kind of person that when she walks in the room the temperature goes up by ten degrees.

Graham Haggett (GH): I basically never met my grandmother, but somebody told me that the last picture she saw was one of me.

SW: Yeah…

September 10th, I sent my mom an email with a picture of you, it was one of your first real smiles. And then that morning, 9/11, she emailed back something like, "So cute! I'm going to steal that baby." So that was what she saw when she first got to the office that morning -- your face.

GH: I know that the last you heard of her you were on the phone.

SW: Mhmm. We were getting ready to get you up and leave for the city when she called and said, "Don't worry. You are going to see stuff on the news, but it is not my building," 'cause her's was the second tower to be hit. So we were on the phone with her when her tower was hit.

GH: She said, "I need to go. I'll call you back when I get out." But she never called you back.

SW: Right.

I don't know a whole lot about what actually happened from that moment on, but one of her jobs was to manage the mailroom. And so she had a staff of employees. And one of them was named Donnie.

GH: When he got outside of the building and saw that she wasn't there, he ran back in the building to save her. But he never walked out again.

SW: Everybody was willing to do anything for her.

GH: Everything I know about her, it makes me glad that I had her as a grandma even though she was only there for 10 weeks after my birth. And I feel like every once in awhile I can still feel her warmth.