Michigan’s 9/11 legacies: 16 terrorism victims with ties to the state
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Sept. 11, 2026, 6:08 a.m. ET
(This story originally appeared in the Detroit Free Press on Sept. 5, 2002.)
They were among America’s best, brightest and happiest.
Many had attended some of the finest schools — Cranbrook, Detroit Country Day, the University of Michigan, Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Vanderbilt.
As teens, they walked the halls of schools from Cass Tech in Detroit to Traverse City High, all of them contributing, achieving, giving back. They were young scholars and financial wizards, technology gurus, National Honor Society members, athletes, musicians, champions of theater, contributors to their communities.
Most of them were well traveled — and well on their way to the kind of success that defines the American Dream. A few already had achieved that dream, with homes in Manhattan, book credits, TV appearances.
One of them survived the 1993 terrorist bombing of the World Trade Center.
They are gone now, these 16 terrorism victims who had significant Michigan ties. But their legacies live on — in their accomplishments and through their loved ones left behind.
Financial whiz kid on fast track to success
Terrence E. Adderley Jr., 22, had a head and a heart for finance by the time he was a teenager. Before even graduating from Detroit Country Day in 1997, he had started an investment club. His grandfather, William Russell Kelly, founded Kelly Services of Troy in 1946, and his father, Terence E. Adderley, is its president and chief executive officer.
Adderley, who grew up in Bloomfield Hills, took his love of finance to Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn., where he earned a bachelor’s degree in economics in May 2001. Soon after, he landed a job with Fred Alger Management Inc., which had offices on the 93rd floor of the trade center’s north tower.
Joseph White, a University of Michigan business professor and former interim president, said Adderley had tremendous potential.
White knew Adderley through U-M alumnus David Alger, president of Fred Alger Management. As a young analyst for the company, “Ted was thriving,” White said. “He loved what he was doing.”
Besides his father, survivors include his mother, Mary Elizabeth; five sisters, and a grandmother.
Executive had eye for best, brightest
David Alger, 57, president of Fred Alger Management Inc., was a familiar fixture on CNN, MSNBC and CNBC — and at many U-M events. He was a prominent alumnus and supporter of the U-M business school, where, White said, he was the spring commencement speaker in 1997 and served on the school’s senior advisory board.
Alger loved grooming young people for business and often returned to his alma mater.
“David was a terrifically talented man,” White said. “A colleague of mine said, ‘I loved David’s rational exuberance,’ and she got it just right. That was David: very analytical and very optimistic. . . .
“David encouraged people to participate in what he thought would be the biggest bull market in American history — in 1991. It was an incredible prediction.”
Alger was born Dec. 15, 1943, in California but grew up in Grosse Pointe. He received his undergraduate degree from Harvard University and a master’s in business administration from U-M in 1968. He joined his brother Fred’s company, Fred Alger Management, in 1972 as an analyst. He eventually owned 20 percent of the business.
In 1995, Alger’s brother moved to Geneva, Switzerland,and left him in control of the company’s daily operations. At the time of Alger’s death, the firm’s assets had grown from $3 billion to $15 billion and its workforce from 82 to 220.
Alger, who owned homes in Manhattan and Tuxedo Park, N.Y., loved technology stocks and managed mutual funds that ranked near the top of the 1990s bull market. He often appeared on financial TV programs and wrote “Raging Bull: How to Invest in the Growth Stocks of the ’90s.”
On Sept. 11, Alger was working in company offices on the 93rd floor of the trade center’s north tower. There were 1,300 people at his funeral, said White, who attended. Alger is survived by his wife, Josephine; two daughters; his brother, and a sister.
Unfettered spirit loved the city life
Eric Bennett, 29, a Flint native, caught the travel bug early when he took a trip overseas with a high school foreign language club. He traveled often afterward, said his mother, Kathy Bennett of Flint.
He visited Brazil, Puerto Rico, Rome, London and Paris. But Bennett also loved the Brooklyn, N.Y., brownstone where he lived, the big-city life in New York and his job as area vice president for Alliance Consulting Group. His office was on the 102nd floor of the trade center’s north tower.
“From his home, he could see the towers, and from his desk at work, he could see Brooklyn,” his mother said. “He just loved life.”
In 1989, Bennett graduated from Flint’s Kearsley High School, where he had been cocaptain of the football team the year before. In 1993, he received a bachelor of science degree in computer information systems from Ferris State University. He also played football at Ferris State and earned an All-Midwest Intercollegiate Football Conference honorable mention in 1992.
In addition to his mother, he is survived by his father, Terry Bennett, and a sister.
Wings fan held family close to his heart
Frank Doyle, 39, formerly of New Boston and Bloomfield Hills, was a loyal Detroit Red Wings fan. He grew up playing hockey and was the varsity goalie from his first year on at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine. Later, he played on three mens hockey teams near his Englewood, N.J., home.
Doyle attended Huron High School in New Boston and graduated from the Cranbrook Schools in Bloomfield Hills in 1980. He earned a bachelor of arts degree from Bowdoin with majors in economics and government in 1985. He also earned a master’s in business administration from New York University’s Stern School of Business in 1993.
Doyle was senior vice president of the Keefe Bruyette & Woods brokerage in the trade center’s south tower. He directed its equity and trading department and was on the company’s board of directors.
Just before his death, Doyle was training for triathlons.
“He was probably in the best shape of his life” and planned to run a triathlon the weekend after the terrorist attacks, said his wife, Kim Chedel. But, she said, Doyle mostly “loved being a dad” to their children, Zoe and Garrett, who were 3 and 16 months when their father died.
Doyle and Chedel had both escaped harm when the trade center was bombed by terrorists in 1993. Chedel, who then worked at a brokerage in a different part of the complex than her husband, escaped within 2 hours. She said she cried for hours while waiting for Doyle to emerge.
On Sept. 11, Doyle called Chedel after the first plane hit. He was on the 87th floor of the south tower — the second hit but the first to fall.
“He said, ‘If you think we got rocked in ’93, this was 10 times worse,’ ” Chedel said.
“I said, ‘Frank, get out of there.’ He said to me, ‘The PA system said it was . . . more secure to stay in the building.’ ”
Doyle called his wife again at 9:22 a.m. “He said, ‘Sweetie, we’ve gone up to the roof. The doors are locked, and we can’t go down. I know you know this, but I love you . . . and you need to tell Zoe and Garrett every day for the rest of their lives how much Daddy loves them.”
His survivors also include his mother, Maureen Doyle of New Boston, and three siblings.
Teacher kept her friends for a lifetime
Barbara Edwards, 58, who grew up in Wyoming, near Grand Rapids, was a woman of character and warmth. She kept friends for a lifetime and, as a high school teacher, showed up at her students’ soccer games on her own time.
“Barb was a people person,” said her sister Jane Gollan of Seattle. “If you met her 30 years ago, she would still be friends with you. She had a knack for keeping in touch.”
Edwards also was a fan of Bette Midler and of personal mementos like the 40-year-old accordion she had as a child. She never threw anything out, and her garage never had room for a car, family members said.
Edwards, who lived in Las Vegas, graduated from Kelloggsville High School in Grand Rapids in 1961 and from Western Michigan University in 1965. She worked for a time at Catholic Central High School in Grand Rapids. She also married, had three children and lived in various states before divorcing in the early 1990s.
She was a high school French and German teacher in Las Vegas when she went to a friend’s wedding in Connecticut the weekend before the Sept. 11 attacks. She was supposed to return home, but friends convinced her to stay for a couple of days. She wound up on American Airlines Flight 77, which left Dulles International Airport in suburban Washington, and crashed into the Pentagon.
Just before the attacks, one of Edwards’ sons had left a job as a broker in the World Trade Center. In addition to her children, Edwards’ survivors include her parents, Jack and Liss Vander Baan, who live south of Grand Rapids in Allegan County; a sister, and two grandchildren.
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