Continental Flight 3407

February 17, 2009 Gary Benitt

I remember feeling the dread as I first heard the reports of the crash of Continental flight #3407 headed to Buffalo. The news came just weeks after the miraculous landing of

US Airways

flight #1549 in the

Hudson River

. Flight 1549 landed in the river but all of the 155 passengers were able to safely walkaway from was certainly destined to be a tragedy. The 50 people on flight #3407 were not as fortunate.

A couple of days after learning of the crash, a friend of mine informed me that one of the victims was actually a co-worker of ours at eAssist. It's incredible for me to think that a person that I interacted with personally for a period of over 3 years was actually on this flight. Perhaps even more amazing, the wife of one of the victims of the

9/11 attacks

was on this flight as well. Such a tragedy.

I turned to Twitter with a

note

commenting at the fact that I knew one of the victims. The number of emails, text messages and other comments that this generated was pretty impressive. Everyone that I had previously worked with at eAssist wanted to know if they too knew the victim and once they knew who it was, they wanted to express their sorrow.

Although I didn't know him well, I know that

John Roberts

was a very good man, trying to leave a positive impact on the world. The world is a worse place without him in it.