Alicia Titus, 28; parents John and Bev are from Dexter, Michigan. Alicia had worked as a flight attendant for just nine months when her life was taken in the crash of United Airlines Flight 175. Alicia earned a degree in International Marketing at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.  

Profile published in THE NEW YORK TIMES on April 28, 2002

Greg Ernst remembers Sunday, Sept. 9, when he and his girlfriend, Alicia Titus, had been together for nine months. “It was the first time we told each other we loved each other,” he said. Soon after they had started dating, she had told him she demanded happiness. Not from him, but from herself.

Her father, John Titus, said his daughter, 28, who lived in San Francisco, loved parachuting out of airplanes and backpacking alone in Spain and Morocco. He recalled the laughter-filled cross-country trip she took with her mother in a Volkswagen convertible piled full of stuff. Since January 2001, she had enjoyed being a flight attendant. She was on Flight 175 on Sept. 11.

“You could always count on her being in a happy, joyous mood,” said her father, who is writing a book about her so other people can know how wonderful she was. And she had a way of making her numerous aunts, uncles and cousins think of themselves as her favorite, Mr. Titus said.

Mr. Ernst knew that her happiness ran deep. “She laughed in her sleep; that was something I really liked,” he said, although they never figured out what she was laughing about. “I’d hear her laugh, and say, `Lish, are you sleeping?’ and she was asleep.”