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Karen Martin's legacy of laughter helped friends, family cope

By NOELLE DINANT

Staff writer

DANVERS -- A week after Karen Martin's death, her aunt, Joan Greener, discovered a letter tucked in her bureau drawer.

Karen had written the letter more than a year earlier to her boyfriend, Gary Conn, but never mailed it. Greener found the envelope while sorting her apartment and handed it -- still sealed -- to Gary.

He read it quietly, then handed it back.

"I have found through losing people I love," Karen wrote in the closing line, "that life is too precious to waste even one day."

It seemed that Karen had found a way to reach -- to console -- the ones she loved even after death.

"Those words, her words, have helped me get through this," Greener said.

It's been a year now. Karen Martin, 40, of Danvers, was the head flight attendant on American Airlines Flight 11.

The first few months were a blur, her family said.

In the weeks afterward, dozens of sympathy cards and flowers arrived. At her memorial service, the expected crowd of 350 swelled unexpectedly to 1,300, as pilots, flight attendants and mechanics -- all in uniform -- came to pay their respects along with family and friends.

In late November, the family buried an urn carrying ashes from the World Trade Center site next to Karen's parents in St. Mary's cemetery in Salem. And in December, dozens of family and friends celebrated her birthday at a party in New Hampshire.

Then in January, it seemed to hit everyone at once.

"It had felt like Karen had been off on an adventure -- she always was -- and that she was going to turn up," said Greener, who was especially close to Karen after her mother died in 1995. "But she didn't."

But it is Karen herself -- her life of love and laughter -- who is helping to heal her family and friends, and get them through the worst times.

After collecting the ashes, Karen's family stopped for a meal and set the urn on the table. At the urging of the waitress, they also set a place for Karen, ordered her favorite wine -- Pinot Grigio -- and toasted her life.

Then they broke up laughing.

"We started laughing realizing if she were there, she'd be laughing at us for doing that," said her aunt, Linda Austin of Salem.

"It was so goofy, but it was Karen's style. She was a very funny girl, so instead of shedding tears, we celebrated her life."