She was travelling with her sister-in-law and friend Jane Folger to see San Francisco for the first time, a trip the two had planned for months. She raised five children in Bayonne and was widowed in 1988. She held season tickets to the Metropolitan Opera and played mahjong every week.

Killed aboard United Airlines Flight 93, which came down in a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, on the morning of 11 September 2001. The aircraft had left Newark forty-two minutes late, which is the only reason those aboard learned by telephone what had already happened in New York before theirs was taken. They had about thirty minutes. They voted, and they went forward at the cockpit door. The aircraft never reached what it was aimed at.