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Kelly Ann Booms: Staying in Touch, Always

 

Everywhere Kelly Ann Booms lived, she made good friends, which is what you would expect of a lively, outgoing girl, the oldest in a family of four children. But throughout her childhood, she also made a point of staying in touch as she moved from Colorado to Michigan, Australia to Ohio, where her family still lives outside Cincinnati.

"She was very strong willed," said her father, Robert Booms Sr. "It was her strong personality that really made her keep up with her friends."

Ms. Booms got her first real job in Boston, working for PriceWaterhouse in 1999, soon after graduating from Miami University in Ohio with a double major in accounting and finance. Last summer she was notified that she had passed certified public accountant exams.

On Sept. 11, she boarded American Airlines Flight 11 for California, where she had been sent on temporary assignment. She was 24 years old.

In Boston, as elsewhere, she had become involved in charity work, helping out underprivileged families at Christmastime. She also loved sports, and had recently taken up the guitar. "She was very ambitious, very outgoing," her father said. "When she was in a room, you knew she was there. She influenced a lot of people in a lot of ways."

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From "Profiles in Grief" of The New York Times