[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 7 (Wednesday, January 28, 2004)]
[House]
[Pages H224-H225]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                HONORING THE MEMORY OF SHELLEY MARSHALL

  (Mrs. CAPITO asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute and to revise and extend her remarks.)
  Mrs. CAPITO. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor the memory of Shelley 
Marshall. Mrs. Marshall was a budget analyst for the Defense 
Intelligence Agency who was killed in the attack on the Pentagon.
  I rise to commend the efforts of her husband, Donn Marshall, to honor 
her memory. Using his wife's retirement savings and money he expects to 
receive from the 9-11 Victims Compensation Fund, Donn established the 
Shelley A. Marshall Foundation. The foundation has held tea parties, 
one of Shelley's favorite pastimes, for senior citizens and high school 
students. The Marshall Foundation has also provided resources for story 
hours in libraries

[[Page H225]]

and has held writing and art contests at high schools both in West 
Virginia and Virginia.
  Through the foundation, Shelley Marshall will continue to touch the 
lives of people in need in West Virginia and around the country. I 
thank Donn Marshall and the couple's children, Drake and Chandler, for 
their commitment to helping others and for the worthwhile way they have 
preserved Shelley's memory.
  The Washington Post wrote an article on January 22, 2004, about the 
Marshall Foundation, which I include for the Record.

               [From the Washington Post, Jan. 22, 2004]

                        9/11 Money Funds a Dream


               Man Plans Tribute to Wife Lost in Pentagon

                       (By Jacqueline L. Salmon)

       Shepherdstown, W. Va.--In the tiny townhouse he rents 
     behind an office park, Donn Marshall unfurls an armful of 
     papers on the living room couch. They are plans for a house 
     to be built on land he has purchased nearby.
       Modeled on an 18th-century Irish country house, it will 
     have bedrooms for Marshall's two children, Drake and 
     Chandler, and room for as many as six guests--everything that 
     Marshall and his wife, Shelley, ever dreamed of.
       But it will go ahead without her. Shelly Marshall, a 
     Defense Intelligence Agency budget analyst, was among the 184 
     people who died Sept. 11, 2001, when terrorists flew an 
     airplane into the Pentagon.
       ``I think it should be almost like a monument,'' Marshall 
     said, as he smoothed wrinkles from the house plans. ``In a 
     sense, it's Shelley's money.''
       The Marshall family expects to receive about $2 million 
     from the federal fund created to compensate the injured and 
     the families of the 2,976 people killed that day at the 
     Pentagon and the World Trade Center in New York. Although the 
     money will not take away the grief that has diminished only 
     slightly in 2\1/2\ years, Marshall said it will free him to 
     work full time on the charitable foundation he established in 
     his wife's name--his way of fighting back.
       The fund, established by Congress to protect the airlines 
     from billion-dollar lawsuits, has reached the family of 
     almost every victim. Fund administrator Kenneth R. Feinberg, 
     a Washington lawyer, said that by last month's final 
     deadline, 2,924 families--98 percent--had surrendered their 
     right to sue the airlines in return for an average award of 
     just under $2 million.
       But many who took the settlement wrestled with ``survivor's 
     guilt,'' said Larry Shaw, director of Northern Virginia 
     Family Service, whose counselors are working with many 
     families of Pentagon victims. ``They felt that they were 
     benefiting from the loss of someone they loved.''
       Shaw said family service counselors tell families that the 
     settlement is part of their recovery process. ``And part of 
     the recovery is being able to fulfill some dreams that you 
     had in your life,'' he said.
       Shelley Marshall was a woman of passionate and varied 
     interests. She put together family scrapbooks and hosted 
     Victorian-style tea parties with her mother-in-law, Phyllis 
     Marshall. She loved to spot hawks while out walking. Shortly 
     before her death, she had begun to collect kickknacks 
     decorated with dragonflies.
       On Sept. 11, Shelly and Donn had commuted in separate cars 
     to the Pentagon from their then-home in Charles County, with 
     Donn carrying the children. Together, they said goodbye to 
     Drake and Chandler at the Pentagon day-care center. Then 
     Shelley headed to her office in the southwest wing of the 
     Pentagon, and Donn drove to his Crystal City office, where 
     he also worked for the Defense Intelligence Agency.
       Moments after the plane buried itself in the Pentagon, Donn 
     drove back to the blazing structure to search frantically for 
     his family. The children were unharmed. He couldn't find 
     Shelley.
       Three days later, he got the news that she was dead.
       The words of a grief counselor who visited him resonated. 
     ``Give your sorrow meaning,'' he urged Marshall. ``It was 
     like he flipped a switch,'' Marshall recalled.
       With his wife's retirement savings, he set up the Shelley 
     A. Marshall Foundation. He has used the proceeds to organize 
     dozens of intergenerational tea parties for elderly nursing 
     home residents and high school students across the Washington 
     area, where Shelley grew up, and in West Virginia, where his 
     parents live.
       He has also funded story hours at libraries in both places, 
     set up writing contests at high schools and arranged high 
     school art workshops to reflect the interests of his late 
     wife. In all, the foundation has spent about $60,000 on such 
     events and plans to expand nationwide as well as overseas, 
     where tea enthusiasts in Britain and Moscow are planning 
     offshoots.
       ``I didn't want [Osama] bind Laden to have the last word on 
     her life,'' Marshall, 39, said. ``She died far too young, and 
     I wanted her to be able to touch people.''
       All together, he figures, more than 5,000 people have 
     participated in the foundation's activities.
       ``We can leave September 11 as a black day in history,'' 
     Donn Marshall told guests at a fundraising tea party at the 
     Pentagon City Ritz-Carlton in November, on what would have 
     been Shelley's 40th birthday, ``Or we can look at it as a day 
     when something incredible started--and that's what we're 
     trying to do.''
       The foundation work has drawn in family and friends. 
     Shelley's mother, Nancy Farr, makes hundreds of cucumber 
     sandwiches and shortbread for the nursing home parties. The 
     work, Farr said, ``is a blessing. Shelley will always be with 
     us in our hearts, but other people know her because of the 
     foundation.''
       Sometimes the work fends off Marshall's loneliness. 
     Sometimes it doesn't. He believes that Shelley is still near. 
     The signs are everywhere. The way the heat in his home clicks 
     on when he asks her for a signal that she's present. A door 
     that blows shut to remind him to take the children's coats to 
     their school on a cold day. A dragonfly balloon from his 
     son's birthday party that drifts into the bedroom and stops 
     by his bed.
       The signs comfort him--a little. ``I know she's okay and 
     that's huge,'' he said. ``Now I just have to deal with not 
     seeing her for a long time.''
       Shelley used to make a pot of tea each night for Donn, and 
     he has taught himself to make tea the way she did. She had 
     collected dozens of different kinds from her favorite tea 
     shops--fragrant Oolongs, delicate ``white'' teas and black 
     teas such as light-bodied Darjeeling and full-flavored 
     Assams--and could recite their characteristics.
       Last January, Marshall quit his job and moved his family to 
     West Virginia to be closer to his parents in Martinsburg and 
     Shelley's in Herndon. He said the compensation fund should 
     support his family and put the children through college 
     while he works full time on the foundation.
       His next step is having their house built on 18 acres of 
     woods and meadow that he bought just outside Shepherdstown, a 
     cozy town of 1,500.
       ``I'm going to get people to come up for the weekend,'' he 
     said. ``We'll have two to three different people at the 
     dinner table, hopefully, on the weekends--my artist friends, 
     politicians. I want a lot of people coming in and interesting 
     the kids with their ideas--I think they should have an 
     extraordinary life after what happened to them.''
       When Marshall came out to see the land for the first time, 
     he heard a scream above him and looked up to see a hawk. It 
     circled over his head.
       ``I said, `Okay, this is the place.'''

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