Wpg Free Press: ‘Turning grief into compassion’: Winnipeg woman who lost partner in 9-11 quietly marks anniversary

As the Winnipeg Free Press reports: 

Three weeks before the anniversary of the 9-11 terror attacks that killed her spouse Chris Egan, Ellen Judd was in a Guantanamo Bay courtroom sitting across from the alleged mastermind, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

“I’d rather not talk about the people who did this today,” Judd said Monday from home where she was quietly marking the 9-11 anniversary of the dark day that claimed Egan. 
In late August, Judd spent a week attending the U.S. military commission’s pretrial hearings for the five men accused of committing the worst terror attack on U.S. soil. She was among the loved ones of five 9-11 victims invited to face the five accused including the infamous Mohammed, whose hirsute image appeared in news stories around the world.

On Sept. 11, 2001, 2,976 people died, including 26 Canadians, when hijacked planes slammed into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Egan was visiting her brother Michael on the 105th floor of the World Trade Center.

On the 16th anniversary of 9-11, Judd’s focus was on her loved one.

“Every year some people gather at a plaque for Chris at the Brodie Centre,” she said of the tribute to the nursing professor that’s located at the University of Manitoba campus at the Health Sciences Centre. “People gather to be with each other.” The plaque is dedicated to Egan: “clinician, researcher, teacher, humanitarian, friend.”

“What so many of us remember is her incredible vivacity and love of life,” said Judd, an anthropology professor at the University of Manitoba. “It’s something to cherish and it came through in everything – in the delight she took in the people around her and in the work she did.”

At this time of year, Judd said she looks forward to reviewing potential recipients for the scholarship fund in Egan’s memory.
The Dr. Christine Egan Memorial Scholarship Fund administered by the University of Manitoba is for nursing students in Nunavut – people and a place that Egan loved.

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