Roused by 9/11, a Tireless, Clear-Headed Crusader for Truth in Government

~

Beverly Eckert

Late Thursday night, Ms. Eckert died in a plane crash near Buffalo.

Her public life ran between two calamities, seven and a half years apart. But that life hardly was defined by them.

What distinguished Ms. Eckert — and many of the other 9/11 families — was a civil refusal to settle for platitudes from government.

Ms. Eckert’s penetrating gaze fell on everything from building codes that left the skyscrapers without enough stairways for emergency evacuations, to a system of national intelligence that seemed to have a hard time passing e-mail messages from one agency to another.

It was truth-seeking, in service to the nation.

~