'He Was My Life, My Future'

By Stephanie McCrummen | STAFF WRITER

September 19, 2001

Jillian Volk grew up with Kevin Michael Williams. They lived five minutes apart, she in Wading River, he in Shoreham. They were high school sweethearts, and college did not separate them, either.

They both went to school in Boston, and when they were done, they both moved back to New York. He lived on the Upper East Side, she lived on the Upper West Side. They both got jobs in lower Manhattan. He worked on the 104th floor of World Trade Center Tower Two, and she taught school in TriBeCa. Last December, they got engaged with a wedding planned for Dec. 1. They are both 24.

They saw each other Monday night before the attack. They were fixing up the apartment they planned to share after the wedding. Williams was putting a new bolt on the door, and Volk was washing some new glasses and hanging a shower curtain. They were having fun, Volk said.

"He was my life, my future."

Tuesday, she called him after the first plane hit Tower One. Kevin, a bond salesman for Sandler O'Neill, said he was evacuating, and she hasn't heard from him since. That afternoon, Bellevue Hospital reported that a Kevin Williams was there, but it was a different man.

Volk has done what everyone is doing: checked the hospitals, put up flyers, turned over credit card numbers. She heard a story that a man named Kevin got out, then went back in Tower Two to help, and that sounds like something Kevin would do. Volk is trying to find the person who reported that story. On Sunday, she attended Mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral, but being in Manhattan has become increasingly difficult to bear.

"I look at the smoke and I just see him," she said.

On Monday, she waited at her parents' home in Wading River, and she did the only thing she can do right now, which is to say she continues to hope.

"I know if it was him searching for me, he wouldn't give up, either," she said.