Sept. 11, 2001, is one of those dates Americans never will forget. It hits especially hard for Angelia Blunt, whose sister died that day 22 years ago.
Marsha Ratchford had been in the Navy about 15 years by 9/11. She had just re-enlisted and had received a promotion. She was working as Naval information technician, assigned to Pentagon. Blunt said she called Ratchford that day, which was not unusual because the two spoke almost daily.
She said she wanted to check in with her older sister after learning the first plane hit the World Trade Center in New York City. She said she could not reach her, though. At some point after the second plane hit, Blunt said, her brother-in-law called Ratchford from Bolling Air Force Base in Washington. “As soon as he hung up telephone with her, that’s when he felt the shake,” Blunt told FOX10 News. “And it was a plane hitting the Pentagon.” Blunt said she was not panicked at first because her sister normally worked in a different part of the Pentagon. But when she still couldn’t reach her, she said the family met up at her mother’s house and they drove to northern Virginia. She said when they finally arrived, smoke was still visible. “We actually did not get confirmation until October that they had found by body fragments,” she said “They had the DNA on us. … And that’s how they confirmed. They only found skin fragments.” Blunt said she feels the loss every day but especially on this day. She said it would have been easier, in way, if her sister had died in a traffic accident. “Because I felt like I don’t have closure,” she said. ‘So I have to put in my mind – ‘cause we never received the body,” she said. “So, I just put in my mind that she’s on a Navy ship, or she’s out fighting a war. You know, I have to put it in my mind that she’s still out doing her thing with the Navy.” Blunt said she and her sister made a promise to each other that if anything should happen to the other, the surviving sister would take care of the other’s family. And that is exactly what she did, helping her brother-in-law raise her sister’s three children – who were ages 1, 8 and 11 at the time. They now all are grown. Over the years, Blunt said, she has attended more than a half-dozen national memorial observances to 9/11 victims, going at least once during every administration since except for Joe Biden’s. She said an elementary school in Virginia named a bench after Ratchford, and Prichard – where their mother was living at the time – named a street after her. The year after Ratchford died, Blunt founded Marsha’s Guardian Angels, a nonprofit that feeds the hungry and works with the homeless. She said she has continued with that – even after one of the homeless men attacked her, requiring surgery.Blunt said it is a way to keep her sister’s legacy alive, although she says nothing ever will fill the void. “I can’t explain it,” she said. “She was like jewel of the family, like the centerpiece, that kept in touch with everybody in the family. She was like the second mom cause our mom used to work two, three jobs.”
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