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SADIE ETTE: A Taste for Adventure

 

Sadie Ette loved to show friends and family where she worked, laughing at their startled faces as the elevators whooshed off to the 106th floor at 1 World Trade Center, where she was an account representative for Windows on the World. This summer she assured her cousin Ben Edokpayi that after the 1993 bombing, security had been fortified. "It didn't cross her mind that it would happen again," he said.

Ms. Ette, 36, had a taste for adventure and risks. A decade ago, she migrated here from Eket, Nigeria, where she had studied law, but continued to skip around the world on her many travels. She fastidiously maintained contact with far-flung relatives and friends, and was at the center of a large social group of Nigerians in New York. Every week she would phone Mr. Edokpayi, who lives in California, launching into Nigerian pidgin English with her cheerful signature greeting, "How now!"

When Mr. Edokpayi was packing up Ms. Ette's Manhattan apartment, he saw a Bible on her pillow, which she had apparently read before work that final morning. It was open to the 91st Psalm: "With His wings He will cover you and beneath His wings you will find refuge; His truth is a shield, a full shield.You will not fear the terror of night, nor the arrow that flies by day."

"That gave me some sense of relief," Mr. Edokpayi said.

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From "Profiles in Grief" of The New York Times