Two Sisters Were Inseparable, Even at Work

By Martin C. Evans | STAFF WRITER

September 20, 2001

A ÂmissingÂ poster with Samantha Egan, left, and her sister, Lisa, at ManhattanÂs Union Square Park, where many memorials have been set up since the attacks on the World Trade Center. (Newsday Photo / Mayita Mendez)

They are together in a photograph affixed to a fence in Manhattan's Union Square Park, amid candles and flowers and the photocopied hopes of thousands.

Lisa and Samantha Egan, who grew up in Rocky Point and always seemed inseparable, had posed for the photo for a Mother's Day present - back-to-back and smiling, so full of life.

They even worked together. Lisa, always looking out for her little sister, had gotten Samantha a job a few months back with the company where Lisa had been a human resources administrator for four years - Cantor Fitzgerald, on the 104th floor of Tower One at the World Trade

Center.

On last week's sunny Tuesday, when terrorists plunged a jetliner into the silver skyscraper, Lisa and Samantha were together, and joined the ranks of the missing.

"That's just the way they were, always laughing, always fun, but very serious, very astute, very smart," said their great-aunt, Honey Martin, of Glen Cove. "If one had an opportunity to get out, she would not leave without the other."

They were avid athletes. Lisa, who excelled at volleyball, was preparing to run in a marathon. Samantha had a fondness for in-line skating.

Their grandmother, Gloria Egan of Brooklyn, said that Lisa, 31, attended Fairleigh Dickinson University. The school's provost said Lisa is still remembered and well-liked on the university's Madison, N.J., campus, eight years after she earned a master's degree in business administration.

Samantha, 24, attended a college upstate, and did charitable work before joining her sister at Cantor Fitzgerald. She had planned to return to school.

Their younger brother, Brendan, a marine, drove from California to be with the family.

"He is so beside himself he burst into tears," Martin said. "He's so hard hit, you would have to know them to know how close they all are. This will never end for these people, will never end for this family."

Martin said the family narrowly avoided having even more misfortune befall them. A cousin of the sisters, William Martin, also worked at the World Trade Center. He retired four days before the disaster.

Yesterday morning, David and Elizabeth Egan, the women's parents, planned to visit Lisa's apartment in New Jersey for the first time since their daughters were reported missing.

"As a parent, it is the world turned upside down in the worst possible way," David Egan said.

He was sure to find details of his daughters' lives when he arrived there. Bottles of fragrance. Athletic shoes. Perhaps the jacket Lisa wore the last time she came home.

But with hope fading that his daughters will ever come home again, those memories invade him. Some moments are joyful, he said. Others are unbearable. "Right now, we're not awash in memories, we're drowning in them."

Meanwhile, the Egans' life was already in turmoil, Honey Martin said. The couple is living in a hotel room near Rocky Point after the sale date of a home they are purchasing was postponed and they had to relinquish the house they had been renting.

David Egan said he appreciates the efforts of rescue workers who continue to sift through the rubble of the collapsed buildings, and he hopes that people will be found alive.

"God has recognized their efforts, whether they are fruitful or not," he said. "I rejoice for every person who is pulled from there, whether it is my daughter or not."

Staff writer Michael Rothfeld contributed to this story.