Patricia Jackson keeps the airline ticket tucked in a notebook. She often pulls it out and reads the short note she wrote to herself on the bottom.
"When things get tough remember this!"
Jackson, 57, of Penn Township, Butler County, would have used that ticket a decade ago to board USAir Flight 427 at Chicago O'Hare International Airport. But a business meeting ended early, so Jackson boarded an earlier flight for Pittsburgh. It was a decision that saved her life.
Once home, Jackson and her husband, Wally, went grocery shopping. Walking through the aisles, word spread among customers about a plane crash. She quickly realized it was Flight 427.
"Every day I wake up and say, 'Thank you, God,'" Jackson said.
Though shocked after Flight 427 crashed, Jackson flew just two days later to Milwaukee with the encouragement of friends and family. She thought she was on the road to recovery.
Seven years passed before Jackson realized she hadn't healed.
After watching planes hijacked by terrorists crash on Sept. 11, 2001, Jackson's trauma let loose. The overwhelming emotion felt by most Americans in the days that followed unlocked Jackson's unresolved emotions.
"I was crying all the time and I couldn't sleep," she said. "Everybody was upset, but they weren't walking around crying all the time. I just knew I need someone to talk to."
Jackson sought counseling, which has helped her deal with the hidden emotions.
"I could tell I still had that lingering trauma," she said. "I had to go to therapy after 9/11, which I never did after the Flight 427 crash. They decided I had delayed stress syndrome. It stays with you."
The Sept. 11 crashes were hard for victims' families and other crash survivors, said Gail Dunham, director of the National Air Disaster Alliance/Foundation, a Washington, D.C., nonprofit group that helps victims.
"9/11 affected everyone, especially our members," Dunham said. "They all went back to ground zero."
Jackson has since retired from her job as a committee meeting organizer for SAE Inc. Now, she volunteers at the waiting room of Butler Memorial Hospital's intensive care unit, talking with anxious family members and running errands. On Sundays, she spends some time alone at a nearby farm, just thinking.
Her grown daughters live in New York City and in West Chester, Chester County. They e-mail each other, sharing a common tag line on their messages: "Remember life is a gift, not a right."
"It changed my whole family life," she said. "I can't believe it's been 10 years because it's never really ever out of my head."
