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VERONIQUE BOWERS: A Closet of Names

 

Veronique Bowers lived in Bedford- Stuyvesant and worked in accounts receivable at Windows on the World and loved beautiful clothes so much she named her son Dior, after Christian Dior. She said she needed expensive clothes because the clients were very high-class people, said her uncle, Clifford Tillman. But the truth was, Ms. Bowers had always been a lavish spender and generous. Mr. Tillman remembers that Ms. Bowers, 26, got a Tommy Hilfiger sweatshirt for Dior last Christmas. Dior is 9 and has muscular dystrophy and uses a walker and has the mental capacity of a younger child. He and his mother lived with her grandmother. Mr. Tillman said Ms. Bowers called her grandmother on her cell phone when the building was hit and was so hysterical she was saying that an ambulance hit the building. Then she called her mother. "She started yelling to her mother that something is wrong, the building is shaking and smoke is everywhere," Mr. Tillman said. "She was saying, `Mommy, mommy, I'm trapped' and she made a statement that she loves her. Then everything went dead." Straightening out Ms. Bowers room this week, her family found a pair of green Gucci boots, with gold trim, still in tissue paper.

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From "Profiles in Grief" of The New York Times; Picture from CNN