Colorado Springs 91-year-old still paints for daughter killed on 9/11
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (KRDO) — No matter how many years pass, to Gene Yancey, 9/11 feels like yesterday. It was a day that would forever change him. And it’s a day he’s been turning into something beautiful ever since.
Yancey’s daughter, Kathy Yancey LaBorie, was killed on United Airlines Flight 175 twenty-five years ago Friday. She was the lead flight attendant on the plane, the second to strike the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.
Watching the horror unfold on live television, Yancey’s wife knew right away.
“She said to me, ‘That’s Kathy’s plane,'” he recalled. “And I said, ‘How do you know?’ Because she told me she would call me from L.A., and so I know it’s her.”
“That hit me like a ton of bricks,” said Yancey.
LaBorie was a Mitchell High School graduate who had a tremendously successful aviation career. On 9/11, she was steps away from the terrorists who would take her plane.
“She was feisty,” said Yancey. “She was only five-one, and she would have done everything she could to keep those guys, those terrorists, from taking over the plane,” he said.
The walls of his home are covered in her memory. Photos of a woman he calls the light of his life. A runner-up for Miss Colorado Springs. A woman he loved and still misses every single day.
“Very fresh still,” he said when asked if the loss still feels recent.
His salvation?
Painting.
At 91 years young, Yancey still paints for his daughter. And he does so out of a storage closet he converted into a makeshift studio, with every canvas carrying the same subtle dedication.
“Every time I start painting, I know what it’s going for,” he said. “It’s going for a tribute to her.”
In each painting, Yancey includes an eagle, his symbol for Kathy.
“She was a wonder,” he said. “The light of my life. I miss her terribly.”
Yancey sells each painting. All proceeds to the Kathryn Yancey Scholarship Fund, which benefits Mitchell High School’s Junior ROTC program. This is the scholarship’s 25th year. It has raised roughly $50,000, with Wings Credit Union among those who have donated.
If you’d like to donate, you can send contributions to:
Charles Zimkas, Chairman
Kathryn Yancey Scholarship Fund
8085 De Anza Peak Trail
Colorado Springs, CO 80924
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