FORT PIERCE, Fla. — One of the flight attendants onboard the plane that crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, was from the Treasure Coast.
The brother of Cee Cee Lyles spoke with WPTV NewsChannel 5 about the impact she had on him and her community.
"I was proud of her for everything she's done," Tony Ross, who lives in Fort Pierce, said. "I'm proud of her. Where I was, she was. Where she was, I was. We took care of each other. It's a love between brother and sister that you should have."
Lyles was a flight attendant on board United Airlines Flight 93, one of the planes hijacked on 9/11 that crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
In the midst of the chaos aloft, she was able to call her husband twice, leaving a message the first time, reaching him the second.
Her husband, Lorne Lyles, spoke with WPTV in 2001 about that conversation.
"She just told me that plane was hijacked and she was calling to let me know," Lorne Lyles said then. "She was calling to let me know that she loved me and told me to tell the kids that she loved them."
Before she was a flight attendant, Lyles worked for the Fort Pierce Police Department.
Lyles was on the force for six years, working as a detective and officer.
"She was a good role model for other kids," Ross said. "She was a good mother, good sister, good daughter to my mom and dad. She was just a good person all around."
Her life, Ross said, was dedicated to serving others.
"She took everything as a challenge to see if she could do it," he added. "Everything she did, she succeeded at it."
Ross said he's been very appreciative of the way his family has been treated each time they've gone back to the crash scene, now a national memorial.
"It made me feel so good to be the brother of Cee Cee, who was a hero. She was a hero," he said.
Most of her family will be in Shanksville this weekend to remember that fateful day.
Fort Pierce's annual 9/11 ceremony will be available on the city's Facebook page Saturday at 9:45 a.m.
