In Memory of Antoinette Duger
[Note: The following was written by my friend Chris Bowes, and is a re-post from last year. You can find the names of all 9/11 victims and the blogs where tributes were done last year, on this page.]
“It only takes a spark, to get a fire going, and soon all those around can warm up in its glowing.
That’s how it is with God’s love, once you experience it, you take His love, to everyone, you want to pass it on.”
That song is an old campfire song. It tells of how a small spark can start a life changing fire. How small seeds of goodness planted in people’s hearts can make differences. How one person, changing their world, can help to change
and improve other people’s lives.
Antoinette Duger was that spark. She was that seed. Antoinette Duger was a daughter, a sister, a wife, a mother, an aunt and so much more. To those who knew her, she was a good friend. She was respected and loved.
Antoinette did the right things because they were right. She was a strong, loving person and she leaves a legacy of love and caring that will live on in those whose lives she touched. She put the lives of her family before all else and the benefit of others before herself. If someone needed something, Antoinette saw that need met.
Antoinette left behind a husband, Ray, and a daughter, Megan. On one of the memorial sites Ray’s sister said that Antoinette turned Ray around. That she was the best thing that happened to him. Antoinette, Ray carries your love and strength within him. It helps him guide Megan and protect her as she grows up. It will help carry him in times of despair and make him smile when he remembers times you had together. The love you gave him will fuel him as he moves forward.
Antoinette, Megan misses you. She does and will think of you often. She will think of you when she gets her license. When she goes on her prom. When she graduates. On her wedding day. She will tear up when she holds her child, knowing that although you can see her, she can’t see you. But Antoinette, because you were strong, Megan will face her darkest hours knowing you are with her, and she will make you proud. She will stand up to the temptations in life and face them down. She will be loving and strong, because you were. She will do the right things, because you did. She will be guided through life by Ray, who carries your memory and virtue in his heart. Your legacy of love and caring and goodness will live on through them.
It will also live on in those who knew you outside your family. Antoinette, because of you, friends, remembering what you were like, will do for others as you did for them. Antoinette, someone you never met, will do the right thing, or help a person in need, because they were influenced by someone else whose life you touched.
The goodness and love you personified and gave so willingly, the seeds you sowed, the positive influence you spread around will go on. Your impact on the world will last longer than the 44 years you were here.
We celebrate you, and the world is significantly better for having you in it.
Wife, mother, sister, daughter, aunt, friend, hero. Antoinette, you will be remembered.
God speed sweet angel.
Antoinette Duger, taken way too early, September 11, 2001.
Scott says:
God bless you Antoinette Duger! And may he bless your family and friends with some sense of comfort as they are left devastated from your untimely and senseless death from those who share from the hand of evil. Lovely lady, I honor your memory.