Leo Blagburn spends his days assembling furniture he and his wife, Carrie, purchased last weekend, all the while keeping close watch on television broadcasts for news that his wife has been found alive.

Carrie Blagburn, 48, a civilian budget analyst for the Army, has not been heard from since Flight 77 plowed into the side of the Pentagon housing her office Tuesday morning, loved ones said. The Army lists her as unaccounted for.

"I don't like to leave because I need to be near the telephone," Leo Blagburn said at his home on a cul-de-sac in Temple Hills. Army counselors "come by every day to give me an update, but the update is always the same: She's missing. That's all they can tell me."

For two days after the crash, Blagburn called his wife's cell phone several times and got only her voice mail. "The thing that hurts so bad is . . . you get her voice," he said. "But I've stopped calling. I can't stand to hear her voice like that."

Blagburn's youngest daughter, Deanna, 16, has been helping him take calls from supportive friends and relatives. His son DeAndre, 22, a soldier, is trying to get home from Saudi Arabia, where he flew for a temporary assignment four days before the crash of Flight 77. Travel has been delayed because of tighter security surrounding flights from that region into the United States, Blagburn said.

While he waits, Blagburn flashes on memories of his 23 years with his wife -- trips, outings to dance clubs, church visits, the births and weddings of their children, the tender loving care she has given their grandchildren. He pointed to the six-foot-tall plants that his wife nurtured, the drapes she sewed, the wallpaper they applied together.

"I'm praying that she'll get back here to enjoy it with me again," he said. "I can't think anything else but that right now."

-- Avis Thomas-Lester

Source: The Washington Post, AP and washingtonpost.com

The profiles in this feature were written in the months following Sept. 11, 2001.