Would have been 22 today. I miss her horribly. Enough said.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: BF,

(

LSR

I have no clue how a smiley face appeared because I certainly didn't click on any of those "graemlins".

I was sending you a hug and that's what ended up as my response.

You already know how I feel, because we spent time together on what should have been a beautiful day for ALL of your family.

Computers are "life"lines, most times.. but considering what appeared as my response....I did have to make sure you understood I was attempting to send a hug.

Always,

L

Thanks Lyn for your thoughts as always. Barbara

My mother was just saying yesterday what a special kid Tara was, even as a little girl. I feel nothing but despair over this terrible loss, as I face another horrific anniversary of her awful death. Even reminiscing about her wonderful but short life, is very painful. I'd give anything to hug her again.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: BF,

Tara would have been 24 yrs. old today. I really have nothing I can say about it except that I am extremely sad and miss her very much. She was born on November 27th, 1981 and almost lived to be 17. What a horrible waste of a beautiful life.

Edited 5/2/07

Apparently this article on Tara after she died, was removed from this person's site, so here it is although I don't think the picture of her will show up.


Episcopal student `seized the day' Tara

Fetherolf was on her way to year of study in Switzerland


Tara M.Fetherolf who died in the flight 111 plane crash. (Photo/Episcopal Academy)
by Maureen TkacikDaily News Staff Writer


At Episcopal Academy in Lower Merion, the Latin classes start in sixth grade. That's the kind of school it is. Small, rigorous classes; attentive teachers; brainy, motivated students -- they're the norm, typical. Tara Fetherolf, on the other hand, was not typical. In choosing her sophomore courses last summer, she decided to create her Latin curriculum independently, cramming three years of lessons into one to get ahead. But to "carpe" the proverbial "diem" was the way Fetherolf lived life.By the end of her sophomore year, she'd mastered chemistry and physics, starred in "South Pacific," taken college-level calculus, published poetry, rowed crew, read Homer. Last month she decided to follow her academic pursuits overseas to Switzerland. She was 16. "She seized the day," said Betsy Hamilton, Tara's Fetherolf's adviser at Episcopal. "We're just devastated that her day was so short." Hamilton and other faculty members learned Thursday Fetherolf had been on Swissair Flight 111, which was carrying 229 passengers from New York en route to Geneva Wednesday night when it went down in the waters off the coast of Nova Scotia.Episcopal spokeswoman Emily Cronin said the Fetherolf family remained at home in Haverford and had not decided yesterday whether to travel to Nova Scotia or when to have a funeral. Fetherolf's parents were grieving in seclusion and did not wish to comment on their daughter's death, school administrators said. "They're very, very private people," said Jim Squire, the school chaplain. "They weren't very high-profile." Squire visited Fetherolf's parents and seventh-grade sister Thursday. "Sometimes it's just important for someone to sit and be there. There's not much that can be said," Squire said. "Words really become woefully inadequate." But Squire, like so many others at the close-knit school, had no shortage of glowing words to describe Fetherolf. "There's sort of a theme to Tara," he said. "I like to use the image of the runner." Though an avid skier, Fetherolf was never a stellar runner, he recalled affectionately. But it didn't bother her. She went out for cross-country anyway and "worked very hard to always achieve her personal best." Academically, her personal best soared towards genius, administrators said. On the debating team, she was a natural; when she started learning Latin, she devoured the classics; when she walked into Hamilton's office every week, she'd be flush with the thrill of a new calculus concept. "She approached things with a need to conquer them," said Episcopal Headmaster Jay Crawford, recalling how the high-schooler would bulldoze through piles of work in minutes, only to ask for more. "She would come in and her eyes would sparkle and she would get all excited," remembered Hamilton fondly. "It might sound very strange, but she was very hungry for knowledge." In eighth grade, Fetherolf knew she wanted to become a doctor. She also, Cronin said, had decided on a favorite band -- the Smashing Pumpkins -- and a favorite movie -- "Pulp Fiction." By sophomore year, she'd acquired a taste for Bach and orthopedics and had changed her ideal college choice so many times that teachers were caught in a giddy whirlwind of ambitions and plans for the young scholar. "Any profession that she decided to go into, she would've been successful," Hamilton said. "That's the real shame of it all . . . it's just enormous lost potential."


©1998 Philadelphia Newspapers Inc.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: BF,

Tara was on her way to this school. She hoped to attend Oxford after completing her education here. She was the only student not to make it for the first day of school.

http://www.aiglon.ch/hello1.shtm

I think Tara might have eventually pursued foreign affairs in some capacity, had she lived to be an adult.

Here is something I wrote on a blog about her:

Monday, March 19, 2007

My daughter Tara


Tara was 16 years old, when she was killed in a horrific plane crash, that should never have happened. She was an incredible human being and I feel honored to have been her mother for the short years she was on earth. I have some incredible memories from the last months that she was alive. Visiting Ireland, and how she acted so sophisticated for her age. We stayed at an Inn, where she actually got to see John Hume in the middle of making his peacekeeping efforts, in Northern Island. A very wonderful man that we were sitting with at the time, said that Hume was one of the finest Irishman that ever lived. Says Wikipedia about Mr. Hume who was co-recipient of the 1998 Nobel Peace Prize, with David Trimble of the Ulster Unionist Party, as well as a recipient of the Gandhi Peace Prize and the Martin Luther King Award, "He is regarded as one of the most important figures in the modern political history of Northern Ireland and one of the architects of the Northern Ireland peace process there." Tara was watching history in the making, and I think had she lived, this would have had an impact on her life. She was dead 2 weeks later.

When she decided to go off to an English boarding school in Switzerland, I was very sad about that. I didn't want her to go... I loved being around her and was devastated that I would miss seeing her grow up. We made a secret deal that maybe my other daughter and myself, could come live in the village she would be staying in. I was seriously considering it, as I wasn't ready to let go of my daughter quite yet!


She never made it over to Switzerland for even the first day of school. It breaks my heart to just think about it. She was such a good person and so filled with excitement over learning French, furthering her education in biology, etc., that it is almost unspeakable to think about how her entire future was ripped away from her, by greedy people that were trying to make a few bucks on a gambling machine installed on jets that didn't have enough power to support them. I can't imagine how horrified she would be, if she saw her family today... but that's another story. I am so sad that she is gone...

This message has been edited. Last edited by: BF,

One would think one's own tragedies would harden one against the tragedies of others. Not so.

I am so sorry your heart still aches so badly.

In the words of Edna St. Vincent Millay,

"Time does not bring relief; you all have lied, Who told me time would ease me of my pain!"

quote:

"Time does not bring relief; you all have lied, Who told me time would ease me of my pain!"

DH, isn't that the truth?!

My heart goes out to you also.

Barbara

Tara would have been 26 on 11/27. I still blame the management at swissair for her death. They chose to install that gambling piece of garbage on their jets. They've caused a tremendous amount of sorrow, and they were all about the money. A bank with wings. She was very special to me.

Hi BF

I just wanted to tell you how sorry I am for your loss. I have visited these forums off and on for the past fews years (just as a lurker) and only just registered now.

I did not know anyone personally on that flight, but at the time was an employee of Swissair Cargo in Boston, so remember Sept 2, 1998, as though it was yesterday.

This past Sept 2nd, the 10th Anniversary, I was on a plane coming home from Disneyworld with my husband and two children, and sat there appreciating my family even moreso knowing the hell that you and your family, and all the others connected to the crash were going through at that moment.

I am not very good at the written word, but felt the need to tell you my heart and thoughts and prayers are with you and everyone else and that you may/or have find some sort of peace.

Sherry

Sherry, thanks so much for your thoughts. I'm glad you stopped by.

Barbara

Those posts by and about Tara bring tears to my eyes. We always think what would happen if...and I know she like my daughter , would have been sucessful! She was an overachiever- I can realate to that curiously - so I just hope she sees it all in spirt, somehow!

Shalom!

Thanks Janey for understanding. The loss of Tara was/is devastating.

Barbara

I know Barb!! In understand tho I at least had some time to prepare. But I honestly thought mine had a chnace. Just read a book on the history of cancer and beginning to think not, sigh In your case, it was so much more traumatic. I can share your loss but the trauma is so much more profound. Pls accept my hugs and thoughts and prayers!

Janey, I'm so sorry for you too. Glad you come and post on this board. It's good to have you here.

By Stephanie A. Stanley, INQUIRER CORRESPONDENT
Posted: September 05, 1998


LOWER MERION — As soon as her parents said she could go, Tara Fetherolf insisted on taking the trip to Geneva alone.

The precocious 16-year-old said she wanted to be able to jump right into the mix at the prestigious Swiss boarding school she was to attend this year, her father said yesterday. Her parents could wait a few weeks to see her again.

They agreed. And on Wednesday night, they said goodbye to her at John F. Kennedy International Airport, telling her to call home as soon as she arrived.



The call never came.

Mark Fetherolf awoke Thursday morning at their Haverford home and went straight to his computer to get the number for Swissair. Maybe the plane was late, he thought.

But when his screen flashed to the airline's Web site, he saw the news: Flight 111. Down off the coast of Nova Scotia.

``It took me awhile to move,'' he said.

Life for Tara should never have ended like this, people who knew her said yesterday. She was too special. She was too brilliant. She was destined to be somebody.

``She was one of the most intelligent people I've ever met in my life,'' said Brad Brooks, 18, who met Tara, then an eighth grader, in his 10th grade Spanish and math classes. ``She was in a league of her own.''

By the time Tara finished her sophomore year at the academically strenuous Episcopal Academy in Lower Merion, she had practically tapped out its most challenging classes.

While singing, debating, acting, running and rowing her way through last year, she breezed through senior-level advanced placement calculus, advanced placement Spanish, honors physics and chemistry - earning straight A's. She decided not to return to Episcopal this year because she would have been taking many of her classes at St. Joseph's University.

Instead, she boarded Swissair Flight 111 with big dreams of Oxford or Cambridge. Her Swiss school, Aiglon College, would give her an international high school degree and set her up to apply to European universities.

``She should be meeting the kids right now,'' her father said. ``She should be complaining about her dorm room.''

Yesterday, as Episcopal's faculty and staff returned for their first day of meetings, the news of her death was spreading across the campus community.

``She was one of those wonderful young women who seem to be able to do it all and enjoy every minute of it,'' said James L. Crawford, the head of school at Episcopal. ``We're a school that offers a lot of opportunities to students, and she took advantage of almost every inch of it.''

Friends, parents, teachers and counselors all agreed yesterday that Tara was not only one of the brightest students they had seen, she was also one of the most enthusiastic.

In the middle of her last year, after having dropped Latin after ninth grade, she walked into the Latin department and announced, ``My life is not complete without Latin,'' her teacher, Lee Pearcy, recalled yesterday.

Her faculty adviser, Betsy Hamilton, remembers Tara bursting into her office, her eyes bright with excitement because she had just solved a complicated math problem.

But she wasn't all books. Her friends say she was always there for them, a good listener and a loyal friend. And her father remembers her as a typical teenager, blasting rock music and zipping around in her taxicab-yellow Land Rover.

School counselors will be available at the school when the students return for the year on Wednesday, officials said. And an early morning service that day will likely discuss her death.

She left behind her parents, Mark and Barbara, and a sister, Amy, 12, who will be entering the seventh grade at Episcopal.

``There are a lot of tragic elements to this,'' Crawford said. ``But this is particularly so, because Tara was the kind of person who could have significantly changed the way the world works if she kept developing the way she was developing.''

http://articles.philly.com/199...hool-swissair-flight

Tara was a wonderful daughter, and I'm still so sad that I didn't get to see her grow up. That her sister doesn't have her to turn to when she needs someone...