‘Why I know I’ll see Chris again’

USA01DJ20: Naomi Lauture, a member of staff of the American Bible Society, who lost her fiancé in the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. New York, USA. Photo: ABS photo courtesy of StratMark Corp

NEW YORK, United States — Naomi Lauture and her fiancé Chris Scutter last saw each other the day before the attack on the World Trade Center. She drove over to see him and they chatted before she left to drive to Princeton, some 54 miles (86km) from New York, where she was going on a retreat.

Although she had promised to call him when she got there, Chris rang her before she arrived to make sure she was safe.

“He said, ‘Well, I’ll talk to you later and I love you,’ and I said, ‘I love you, too,’ and that was the last time we spoke.”

Chris, a computer technician, was not based at the World Trade Center but he was due there the following day, September 11, for a meeting with one of his clients. So when Naomi saw the first World Trade Center tower on fire on television in Princeton that morning - and then the second plane hitting the other tower - the implication of what she was seeing did not dawn on her immediately.

“Fifteen minutes later it hits me that it’s the WTC. Chris is there!”

She rang his mother who told her Chris had rung to reassure her that he was not in that building.

Unable to make contact with him herself, she learned more news from his sister Adriane. He had told her he was on the 93rd floor in Tower Two and was getting ready to evacuate.

Naomi’s anxiety persisted, however, and she repeatedly rang Chris’s mother to know if he had rung her again.

“All I can say is that he said he was OK and he wasn’t in that building,”his mother told Naomi.

Then the thought that his reassurance must have been given before the South Tower itself was attacked fuelled Naomi’s anxiety.

“I just began to pray, ‘Lord, please let him be OK. Let him be OK.’

The night of September 11 passed with no word from Chris, so the following morning Naomi drove back to New York.

As she approached the city she encountered traffic jams from the diversions in operation. Praying that she would be able to cross the George Washington Bridge, she arrived there 10 minutes after two lanes had been re-opened and was able to get to the offices of the American Bible Society (ABS) at 1865 Broadway, where she works as Associate Director for Meetings and Travel Services.

Accompanied by Marylou Habecker, wife of ABS President Eugene Habecker, and by an ABS security guard, she went to St Vincent’s Hospital, near the site of the World Trade Center, to look for Chris’s name on the lists of the injured.

When the search proved fruitless Mrs Habecker comforted her. Later they returned to the hospital, this time with Dr Habecker, too, to check the updated lists.

“We go back down and I check the list over and over again and he’s not there,” she recalled. “It was hard. I see the name Chris 20 times on the list, hoping that one will be my Chris, and I don’t see that. And then I have to pick up the phone and call his sister and say that I checked all the lists over and over and he’s not there…”

Afterwards, the Habeckers accompanied her on the slow journey home. She remains deeply touched by their practical expressions of love and concern. The following day she filed a missing person report. Chris’s body has not been found.

* * * * * * *

Naomi and Chris had both grown up attending the First Baptist Church in Spring Valley, New York, although it was not until about two years ago that Chris approached her and, to her surprise, asked her out.

She agreed and their relationship blossomed. There was seven years’ difference in age between them and Chris had a daughter, Shalisha, then seven years old.

One of the things he liked about Naomi was how well she and Shalisha got on from the start.

Naomi, for her part, was struck by how close Chris was not only to Shalisha but to his sister Adriane and his mother, too.

The two fell in love and had recently started talking about getting married in 2003. Chris, she says, “met the requirements”.

“One was you had to have your own relationship with the Lord and he had that. His passion for the Lord was dynamite. And then family affection is very important; he had that, too. And, three, his sense of humour: he was always telling me, ‘Naomi, stop taking life so seriously! Enjoy life!’ And that’s what he would try to get me to do. Work is always on my mind, unfortunately!”

She misses Chris deeply and says she has still to reach the point of admitting that he is not coming back.

“There’s nobody knocking on my door - there’s nobody waiting downstairs in the lobby for me at work. The pain that I feel in missing Chris - I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.”

One of her present concerns is to see that his daughter Shalisha, his mother and his sister are well cared for.

“He cared so much about them and he always wanted to make sure that they were OK, so for me that’s one of the things I’m trying to do. Since this happened I have been with them just about every single day and, if I can’t come by one day, I’m on the phone so we talk every single day.”

In an act which, though necessary, must nevertheless have required immense strength, she, Chris’s mother and Adriane went together to Ground Zero where workers had built an observation platform for the bereaved families.

“We actually went down there twice and I’ll never forget what his mother said. Up there in the platform, holding me extremely tight, she says, ‘My baby boy is somewhere under all this rubble.’ And it was the hardest thing to see her in so much pain.”

His loss comes particularly hard because they all used to see him every day: Naomi and Chris travelled to work together and at the end of the day would collect Shalisha and then spend time with his mother.

“It’s very hard,”says Naomi, the tears streaming down her face, “but I know that God is taking care of him and that one day I’ll see him and that’s what keeps me going.”

She says that Psalm 91 also brings her great comfort: “Because he loves me,” says the Lord, “I will rescue him; I will protect him for he acknowledges my name. He will call upon me, and I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble, I will deliver him and honour him. With long life will I satisfy him and show him my salvation.” (Psalm 91:14 - 16 NIV)

Despite her tears at this hardest of times, she nevertheless shares in the certainty of all believers.

“Knowing that Chris knew Christ I have nothing to worry about. Because in this time of trouble I know that he called on God and God answered him - that’s a promise. It’s right here in the Word and this is what I live by. And this is why I know I’ll see Chris again.”

At times she has regretted not speaking to Chris on the fatal day, but now she is comfortable with their final words to each other.

“My last words to him on September 10 were ‘I love you’ and his last words to me were ‘I love you’. So knowing that he loved me and that he knew that I loved him more than life itself is what keeps me going. We expressed our love to each other so I’m OK with that.”

God continues to send his angels, as she puts it, to surround her.

“I get a lot of support from everyone here at ABS - from Dr and Mrs Habecker, from our security guard, Nelson, from my boss John and our chaplain - just everyone here has stopped by my office to say, ‘Naomi, I’m thinking about you.’”

Out of working hours other friends ring and offer their comfort.

“I pray to God for strength and he’s been granting it to me and I continue to delve deeper in his Word so when I need comfort and support I find it here. This is my living water - this is what I always tell everybody: it’s living water for your dying thirst.”

For the time being she is not thinking about the future.

“I try to take each day one day at a time. It’s like that hymn: ‘One day at a time, sweet Jesus, that’s all I’m asking of you.’ So it’s one day at a time I take.” (1,454 words - NAOMI3.5.12.01)

This article is based on an interview filmed by the ABS for publicity purposes.