By Kathianne Boniello
Diana Sherwood did not get any last-minute telephone calls from her fiancé, Baysider Glenn Travers, as he worked on the 105th floor of Tower 1 in the World Trade Center early in the morning on Sept. 11.
Sherwood had not seen Travers that morning before the father of two left for work because he was visiting his mother Monday night in Flushing and left for his electrician’s job from Queens. The couple had been living in New Jersey, Sherwood said, with Travers helping to raise her three children. They had planned to marry on Dec. 29.
After nine years together, Sherwood told the nearly 200 mourners who crowded into Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in Bayside Monday afternoon that she remembered Travers, 53, by his legacy of love.
“He was my soulmate and always will be,” Sherwood said during the memorial, her voice straining with grief. “When I made life complicated, he made it simple. I knew with him by my side I could get through anything.”
Travers grew up in Bayside, where his adult sons — Donn, 30, and Glenn Jr., 29 — still live. Sherwood said he regularly visited his mother, Lynn, in Flushing.
An electrician with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 3, Sherwood said Travers had been working on several jobs for Cantor Fitzgerald when terrorists destroyed the World Trade Center.
When the two first met at the Bayside Diner, Sherwood said “the happiest period of my life began.”
Family and friends, who packed the tiny Good Shepherd Lutheran Church on 29th Avenue to the brim for Monday afternoon’s memorial service, remembered a generous man who loved to fish on Little Neck Bay, a diehard Mets fan and a good father.
Friend Charlie Biley said “he had the ability to make people feel good.”
Biley described the pair’s long friendship, which began when the two started Little League together.
“He was simply the best friend a human being could ask for,” Biley said during the memorial service. “It’s better for all of us to have known him, to have loved him … I am grateful for that.”
Rev. Dr. Jane Gaeta, who presided over the more than hour-long service, said the pain and tragedy of the World Trade Center tragedy would not overshadow the goodness in life.
“In the midst of overwhelming loss, grief and sadness the power of evil does not have the final say in our lives,” she said.
Sherwood’s sister, Pat Scattolon, said Travers was a humble man.
“He never knew how much people thought of him,” she said.
Sherwood, a former Floral Park resident, said after the memorial Travers was “a very special man.”
“Sometimes it’s the quiet people who just get up every day and go to work and do their job — he was one of the people who did much more than anyone ever knew,” Sherwood said. “He was very generous with his time, his money, and with his heart.”
One of the last communications Sherwood had with Travers was through a tiny note she left on his car he day before the Twin Towers disaster.
“I wrote ‘I love you forever,’” she said. Travers placed a similar note on her car later on.
Sherwood said Travers would have approved of the country’s new sense of patriotism after the Sept. 11 attack.
“He really believed in this country,” Sherwood said. “The fact that people united together would mean so much to him.”
Reach reporter Kathianne Boniello by e-mail at Timesledgr@aol.com or call 229-0300, Ext. 146.
