Before beginning her junior year, Deora traveled to the East Coast for one final visit with friends before summer came to an end.
She had originally planned to take a different flight home.
But on the morning of September 11, 2001, she managed to get a standby seat on an earlier United Airlines flight.
She was happy about it.
She would get home sooner.
She used the last of her cell phone battery to leave a message with her boyfriend’s parents, letting them know that she had made the earlier flight.
Then she boarded Flight 93.
Her family did not yet know that she had changed planes.
The Phone Call
A little after 7 a.m., Deora’s mother, Debby, was getting ready for work when the telephone rang.
It was her daughter’s boyfriend’s mother, calling from San Francisco, where Deora was supposed to arrive later that day.
She was calling with devastating news.
Deora’s flight had changed.
United 93 had reportedly crashed in Pennsylvania.
Debby’s first reaction was disbelief.
She could not accept that the young woman who had simply changed flights to get home a little sooner was suddenly gone.
She dropped Murial off at school and went to work, trying to keep herself together while waiting for something that would prove the news was wrong.
Then the phone rang again.
This time, it was Deora’s friend Aly.
She was crying.
Aly had been unable to drive Deora to the airport for her original flight because she had a class that morning. The two friends had hugged goodbye earlier that day.
Now Aly feared that Deora had been on the plane.
She blamed herself.
Debby told her not to be alone and urged her to find someone who could stay with her.
Then Debby called United Airlines and left her information.
Still, she could not bring herself to believe the worst.
A Mother’s Last Hope
Debby went to a nearby church to pray.
She was searching for some reason to believe that her daughter was still alive.
Then, she later recalled, a quiet thought came into her mind:
“She’s with me.”
It was not enough to erase the fear.
But for a moment, it gave her something to hold on to.
Then her phone rang again.
This time, the call came from United Airlines.
A representative named Sharon DeWitt was on the line.
She confirmed what Debby had been desperately trying not to believe.
Deora was gone.
Inside the church, Debby broke down.
She remembered screaming and crying out, “Not my baby!”
She did not know how long she had been crying before realizing that Sharon was still on the telephone.
There was nothing either of them could say that could change what had happened.
A Life Far Too Short
Deora Bodley was 20 years old.
She was a student with dreams of becoming a child psychologist. She was a daughter, an older sister, a friend and someone who had already spent much of her young life helping others.
She had boarded Flight 93 because she thought she had found a way to get home a little sooner.
She wanted to see the people she loved.
Instead, her decision placed her aboard one of the four planes hijacked on September 11.
Flight 93 crashed near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
Deora never made it home.
Her story remains one of the many deeply personal tragedies hidden behind the enormous numbers of September 11.
She was not expecting to become part of history.
She was simply a 20-year-old college student trying to get home.
And that is what makes her story so heartbreaking.
She changed flights because she wanted to see the people she loved one day sooner.
She never got the chance.