LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — Barbara Edwards taught foreign languages at Palo Verde High School in Las Vegas. On Sept. 11, 2001, she was aboard American Airlines Flight 77 when it crashed into the Pentagon.
Twenty-five years later, the colleagues who knew her say Sept. 11 is not just a chapter in a history book — it's a name on a memorial, a bench on the soccer field, and the memory of someone they still feel could walk around the corner at any moment.
WATCH | Shellye Leggett heard from Edwards' colleagues about their memories of her and how she is being remembered:
Kevin Hagood, a math teacher at Palo Verde who worked just three doors away from Barbara, remembers her laughter, her hallway jokes and the lunches they shared together — ordinary moments that suddenly became priceless.
"Wonderful lady. Just boisterous, kind of loud at times, dressed up as McDonald's French fries on Halloween," Hagood said. "The first thing that comes to my mind is Barbara, and just the fun we had at school and at work and just the camaraderie that we had."
Principal Lisa Schumacher was just a rookie teacher at the time. Barbara was the veteran she looked up to.
"I was a rookie, a newbie," Schumacher said.
On the morning of the attacks, Schumacher was watching events unfold on television before coming to school, not knowing how personal it was about to get.
"It's difficult," Schumacher said. "Very sad."
"Sure, you lose a colleague and a staff member, but you know, you feel like you lost family, you lost a friend," Schumacher said. "You're instantly mourning the loss of all of those people that suffered from the attack, and now Barbara, you know, our good, close friend, so it was really hard to hold it together, very hard."
Twenty-five years later, students walking the halls are mostly too young to remember 9/11, but Palo Verde keeps Barbara's story alive.
The school's Air Force Junior ROTC program holds an annual remembrance, making sure a generation that knows 9/11 as history also understands that, for this school, the loss is deeply personal.
"To continue to remember not only Barbara but those that also lost their lives," math teacher Carol Campbell said. "We don't ever want to forget them."
For Schumacher, the most lasting lesson is not about the day itself, but how we choose to live after it.
"We've got to be kinder to each other, we've got to be loving, we've got to be accepting, we've got to be understanding because the alternative," Schumacher said. "The alternative is painful."
A quarter-century later, Barbara Edwards remains part of the Palo Verde family — remembered not only for how her life ended, but for the joy, kindness and love she brought to the people who still carry her memory.
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