Alfred Marchand
From September 11 Memories
Alfred G. "Al" Marchand was a police officer and flight attendant. He had been a police officer in Alamogordo, New Mexico for over 20 years. He retired from that career and started a new one with United Airlines, where he planned to eventually become a pilot.
Friends said he loved travel, flying and meeting people. Fellow church members remembered him as a devout Christian who would pick up children on Wednesdays, when he was not working, and drive them to church. They recalled a man who would drive donations to an orphanage in Ciudad Juárez every three months. A neighbor, Jason Hayes, said that Alfred Marchand once worked Hayes' shift at a local restaurant when Hayes' wife went into labor with their daughter.
Pastor Brian Hurst said Marchand once told a man who had been arrested that the man needed to bring Jesus Christ into his life. "He was a man of faith — he took it to work," Hayes said. "He was the most down-to-earth, nonjudgmental person I've ever known. He'd talk to you like a human being."
Marchand died at age 44 during the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks while on board United Airlines Flight 175, where he was serving as a flight attendant.
He was our son-in-law, the closest thing we will ever have to a son, and we loved him, appreciated him, and we miss him terribly. Every day is hard, especially for our daughter, Rebecca, his widow. Our lives are forever changed, in many different ways. But all we can do is keep going, and keep telling everyone what a wonderful, nice, caring, giving person he was. His mother, Irene, died December 12, 2001. Her priest said she died of a broken heart. I believe it. He was her only living child, and she really never stopped crying after September 11. Now they are together. And I am glad for her.
