Kecibukia
05-04-2007, 21:22
Five and a half years ago, I was dealt a major lemon in life. Sept. 8th, 2001, I was getting set up at work and I got a call from my roommate. He told me my mom had called and I needed to get in touch w/ her. It was an emergency. Since the building I was in didn’t have long-distance, I closed it up and went to the main site. I called home and was told my father had been killed in an accident. The crane he was working in collapsed, killing him instantly. That was the longest 4 hours of my life getting home.
When I got there, news reporters were all over the place. We watched ourselves on the news and the outrage expressed by my dads’ coworkers. They told us that there had been gross mismanagement at the yards. Maintenance hadn’t been done, been pencil-whipped, or done incorrectly for years. The crane my dad was using that day was a POS that should have been overhauled or decommissioned years before. He was only operating it because he was experienced and the new guy who it was assigned to was nervous about using it.
Then came 9/11. I remember being woken up by my Brother-in-Law that morning. He told me that my uncle had managed to get my dad’s effects from the coroners and that we needed to go out and buy me a new suit. Oh, and BTW, some terrorists crashed a plane into the World Trade Center. The clearest memories I have of the next few days is of getting mad at a phone call from my school asking if I wasn’t there because of 9/11 and looking up at the night sky from the funeral parlor and only seeing two planes. Both armed fighters. A weird site a few miles from two major airports.
Fast forward to 2006. . I had lost my job shortly after getting married and buying a house so things are financially tight. Trying to keep up w/ bills and paying off the debt built up during that time has kept things not exactly pleasant in the financial field. Scrimping to even make mortgage payments was the order of the day all this time.
We hadn’t heard anything from the lawyer we had hired for some time. My mom called to get an update ,w/ implications we’ld get other representation if he didn’t contact us. Within fifteen minutes he called back. :) It turned out that the lawsuit was coming to a head. Several of the companies had changed their stories over the course of the years and were working at cross purposes to eachother . After some noises of taking it to trial , the companies involved decided to settle, for a considerably larger amount than any of us expected. It was to be distributed between my mom, myself, and my sisters.
As of today, we have enough to pay off our house, all our credit card debt, student loans, and bills. We’ll also be setting up college funds for my kids, buying the wife a new car, ,getting some considerable landscaping done to get our property looking nice, and investing the rest.
It was a hell of a sour lemon that I was given, but I’m going to do everything I can to appreciate every sip of the lemonade I’m making from it. I think my dad would have liked that.
When I got there, news reporters were all over the place. We watched ourselves on the news and the outrage expressed by my dads’ coworkers. They told us that there had been gross mismanagement at the yards. Maintenance hadn’t been done, been pencil-whipped, or done incorrectly for years. The crane my dad was using that day was a POS that should have been overhauled or decommissioned years before. He was only operating it because he was experienced and the new guy who it was assigned to was nervous about using it.
Then came 9/11. I remember being woken up by my Brother-in-Law that morning. He told me that my uncle had managed to get my dad’s effects from the coroners and that we needed to go out and buy me a new suit. Oh, and BTW, some terrorists crashed a plane into the World Trade Center. The clearest memories I have of the next few days is of getting mad at a phone call from my school asking if I wasn’t there because of 9/11 and looking up at the night sky from the funeral parlor and only seeing two planes. Both armed fighters. A weird site a few miles from two major airports.
Fast forward to 2006. . I had lost my job shortly after getting married and buying a house so things are financially tight. Trying to keep up w/ bills and paying off the debt built up during that time has kept things not exactly pleasant in the financial field. Scrimping to even make mortgage payments was the order of the day all this time.
We hadn’t heard anything from the lawyer we had hired for some time. My mom called to get an update ,w/ implications we’ld get other representation if he didn’t contact us. Within fifteen minutes he called back. :) It turned out that the lawsuit was coming to a head. Several of the companies had changed their stories over the course of the years and were working at cross purposes to eachother . After some noises of taking it to trial , the companies involved decided to settle, for a considerably larger amount than any of us expected. It was to be distributed between my mom, myself, and my sisters.
As of today, we have enough to pay off our house, all our credit card debt, student loans, and bills. We’ll also be setting up college funds for my kids, buying the wife a new car, ,getting some considerable landscaping done to get our property looking nice, and investing the rest.
It was a hell of a sour lemon that I was given, but I’m going to do everything I can to appreciate every sip of the lemonade I’m making from it. I think my dad would have liked that.