originally: http://ennuipundit.wordpress.com/2006/09/08/stacey-leigh-sanders-2001/Stacey Leigh SandersA brief, well-lived life is small solace when one dies young. Friends and family often can draw upon a well of recollections, keeping a person alive through those memories. And with a life as short and as marvelous as Stacey Leigh Sanders enjoyed, those memories ache with the bittersweet taste of longing to see the smile that brightened so many people, or read the words of encouragement that she was famous for writing.Stacey Sanders died five years ago on September 11th. She had been working for the Marsh & McLennan Companies. Their offices once were on the 93rd through 100th floors of the North Tower. Stacey’s office was on the 96th floor. While the terrorists were able to take her from those who loved her, they could never erase the beautiful light that she brought into so many lives. Whether through the “psych notes” she wrote to her teammates or the way she could identify when someone was struggling and needed a shoulder to cry on, Stacey gave so much to those who knew her.Stacey grew up in Fairfield County, Connecticut. The daughter of John and Martha Sanders, she excelled in academics and athletics and was a loving big sister to Laura. She attended the Greenwich Country Day School before going to Phillips Academy in Andover, where she captained the crew and swim teams. The crew team won the National Championship in her senior year. After graduating from Phillips in 1994, Stacey went to Yale, majoring in literature and meeting in 1996 the man she planned to marry.After graduating Yale 1998, she moved to New York and worked for Organic, an internet consulting firm later to move on to Marsh & McLennan as she applied to business schools, with Harvard in her sights. She and Bryan Koplin had been looking at rings and planning to wed. It was the best of times.All that ended that beautiful, terrible morning. America, a nation, was attacked, her citizens’ lives shattered by the many who were lost that day.In the days following, friends and family of Stacey remembered her, voicing powerful tributes to their beloved daughter, sister and friend. Her father John remembered how she befriended her friends’ families so easily. It was not uncommon, Mr. Sanders said, for her to spend an evening having dinner and seeing a movie with her boyfriend’s grandmother, for instance. Ms. Sanders and her boyfriend, Bryan Koplin, were shopping for rings and considering marriage. “She had an incredible capacity to make herself a part of their families,” Mr. Sanders said. “As a consequence, we all became a part of so many families.”Her freshman year roommate Tania Chozet remembered Stacey’s style and her love for her sister Laura, but mostly her uncanny ability to make others feel welcome through friendship. fondly remember the letter you sent me the summer before our freshman year. It came in such an artsy envelope (one that you had fashioned from pages in fashion magazines) and with a picture of you and Laura. I’ve still got it. Thinking back on it, I now realize it was really representative of some of the things so characteristic of your personality and also telling of those things most important to you: friendship and making people feel welcomed, your sister Laura and fashion and creativity.A man who had met her a few short days before September 11th remembered her smile and her charm. I had met her through mutual friends at a party on Saturday, 9/8…THREE DAYS before the towers came down. What I remember of Stacey that evening was that she was incredibly friendly and very tall! But she was such a sweetheart…and didn’t mind at all dancing with a short, bald guy like myself. At the end of the evening, as I was walking down the steps, I hadn’t seen her sitting on the sidewalk with our friends Rebecca and Tara. She yelled out, “It was nice to meet you!” I turned around, waved goodbye, and continued to my car utterly infected with her smile.Stacey’s classmate at Phillips and close friend Abigail Ross dealt with the immense grief of a dual loss and reflected on the moment when it hit her just over a week after the attack that took Stacey and her father Richard Ross. In this place where I had spent so many mornings enjoying a paper and coffee, Bryan handed me the program and photograph from my father’s service. Quietly, I posted dad’s picture next to Stacey’s and weaved the zinnias through the fence alongside them. In that single moment, looking at their beautiful smiling faces, the magnitude of our personal loss broke down the wall of numbness that had once protected me. Our catastrophe, the sudden death of these two loving and genuine individuals erased everything else—the terrorism, the staggering number of lives lost, the national pain. My only thought was that I would never see my two best friends again. So there, on the pathway of Union Square Park, I broke down and sobbed. It was a loud and uncontrollable response. I am sure people noticed me, as I had observed others, but it didn’t matter. Stacey and Dad were gone.Tom Sgro who worked with Stacey when she interned at WTNH in New Haven posted a comment on a tribute page and was kind enough to share with me his memory of Stacey. “I actually keep a photo of her at my workstation so I’m reminded to savor each and every day…I work at a television station in New Haven, Connecticut. Stacey interned here when she was a student at Yale. I consider Stacey to have been one of our best and brightest. She was a tall, stunningly beautiful girl who only got better-looking as you found out what was inside her. She was smart and kind and unassuming. She never relied upon her looks for advancement. She was a dedicated employee who took her work seriously but not herself. During even the most hectic times at the station, a smile was never far from her face. And what a smile! It could literally stop traffic. I remember how excited she was at the possibility of working in The City. When she left here on her last day, I was certain we would hear from her again…” [ed.-ellipses in original]Tomorrow is promised to no one. Not even sweet, caring, beautiful, loving young women like Stacey. In remembering her life, we remember that which animates us all — love, sweet, perfect love for friends and family, for life itself and for those that are most precious to us. Elton John famously described the lives and untimely deaths of Marilyn Monroe and Princess Diana as candles in the wind that had blown out. The candle of light that was Stacey Sanders burns brightly, reminding those who knew her in life, and those like me who have only come to know her after her death of how precious and wonderful life is. May that flame never be extinguished.