Deena Burnett Bailey was living in Northern California with her husband, Tom Burnett, and their three young daughters in 2001. Twins Halley and Madison were 5 years old, and Anna Claire was 3.
On Sept. 11, Burnett boarded Flight 93 from Newark Airport to San Francisco. He was among the passengers who attempted to retake control of the hijacked plane before it crashed in a Pennsylvania field.
Bailey said the memories remain vivid when she allows herself to revisit them.
"It's easy to kind of put it in a compartment and not think about it and not go back to the emotion of the day," Bailey said.
Burnett called his wife four times that morning to tell her the plane had been hijacked. Bailey said he reassured her that there was a plan to take back the plane.
"He kept telling me that he would be home for dinner. Let the kids know he would talk to them later. He asked me to pray. It was a very normal conversation between a husband and wife," she said.
Her hope that everything would be OK was shattered when she learned Flight 93 had crashed in a field in Pennsylvania.
"Realizing that he was gone. That he was never coming back, that my life, the lives of my children would never be the same; that's the moment that stands out the most for me," Bailey said.
Burnett, a Pepperdine University graduate, is honored at his alma mater through the Thomas E. Burnett Jr. Heroes Garden.
"It's the one place, the one place that on Sept. 11, the girls and I feel so loved, so honored, and really feel like Tom's memory is upheld," Bailey said.
Pepperdine University also remembers all the victims of the attacks each year through its Waves of Flags display at Alumni Park.
Nearly 3,000 flags are displayed each year, one for each victim of the attacks, including national flags representing foreign countries whose citizens were killed.
The Waves of Flags tradition was started by Pepperdine students in 2008. This year's display will remain until Sept. 18.
Bailey believes her husband would be proud of the lives their family has lived over the past 25 years.
"I look at our lives now, and of course, I think of what he would think of his grandchildren, of the men that his daughters married. But yes, the milestones do get easier. They do evoke memories of what might have been," she said.