Timothy Haviland thought the 96th floor of the World Trade Center’s north tower was the top of the world.

“He just loved being up there because it was above the clouds,” said his mother, Betty. “He said he had the whole city of New York spread out below him.”

Tim Haviland, a computer programmer for Marsh McLennan Inc. who was the son of Douglas and Betty Haviland of Ames, had moved from a building farther down Wall Street only a few weeks before Sept. 11, 2001. He had spent so little time there that his wife, Amy, knew Tim was at work in the World Trade Center but not exactly where he was when the madness began.

Tim didn’t make it out of the chaos alive.

“He was a very early riser, and had the misfortune to be at work early that day,” Betty said. “If he’d just voted before he went to work, he’d have been on the train.”

Instead, Tim is presumed to have been working at his desk when American Airlines Flight 11 plane smashed into the north tower between the 95th and 103rd floors at 8:46 a.m.

His parents, Douglas and Betty, could do nothing but watch in horror from their home in Ames.

They sat by the phone all day and took it to bed with them that night, waiting for some confirmation Tim was OK. But it never came.

When morning came, they knew he was gone.

“He was in the path of the first plane,” Douglas said. “We’re pretty certain he was one of the first ones to die. We just hope it was a swift, painless death.”

The publicity began almost immediately, Betty said. She and Douglas did interviews with newspapers and television crews from around the world.

They share photographs of the family with national leaders who came to extend their condolences- another son, Andrew, shaking hands with Secretary of State Colin Powell on the grounds of the American Embassy in Pakistan; Douglas and Betty speaking with former Vice President Al Gore in Des Moines.

Betty said it was the reaction from the community that struck her the most.

“People were really very nice,” she said. “I didn’t have to cook for three weeks. The house looked like a flower shop.”

But it was a Muslim friend who called with his condolences that made the biggest impression on the grieving Betty.

“He called and expressed his sorrow that people from his part of the world had done this terrible thing,” she said. “I was touched that he would say something like that.”

Even with that support, the first year without Tim has been a particularly difficult one.

Douglas said the continuing media attention of the attacks and the war in Afghanistan have made Tim’s death harder to absorb.

“Since he was a victim in such a major pubic event, it sort of prolongs the process of going through grief and trying to put it behind you,” he said.

“Lots of people have lost loved ones, and they’ve shared their experiences with us,” she said. “Many have also lost children, but not usually in such a violent manner.

“And you don’t usually watch the reruns on TV and think `Oh, my, Tim’s in there.’ “

The Havilands want the haunting sights and sounds of a year ago to stop rolling across television screens and newspaper pages as though they happened yesterday. They don’t want to recall the blazing buildings, chaotic streets, wailing masses or screaming sirens surrounding a snarl of steel and glass.

Instead, they want to remember the jovial prankster who used the public library shelves as the backdrop for the intrigues of James Bond. They want to remember late Saturday nights, when they would awake to Tim’s laughter and find him rolling on the floor because of a skit from “Saturday Night Live.”

They want to remember the “rhetoric parties,” where the price of admission was a five-minute rant about any subject you were passionate about.

They want to remember the boy who became the man who dreamed of living in New York, the man who admired Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.

“Tim was very warm, loving, always responsive to people in need. He was witty, funny,” Betty said. “He’s the kind of person who would have reached across whatever is dividing us to hear other people’s pain and sorrow.”

The pain and sorrow continue for the Havilands. Some days are worse than others.

“I think I miss him most intensely when we’re helping elect candidates he’d be supporting, or talking about issues of political policy,” Betty said. “Tim was a passionate Democrat. He was passionate about politics and issues of the day.”

On Wednesday, the Havilands will end the difficult “year of firsts” by speaking at the City of Ames memorial service.

On Thursday, they will travel to New York, where they will spread Tim’s ashes into the ocean near his Long Island home.

It will be the third and final memorial service, but the first one with Tim’s remains.

The bodies of many of the 2,800 people who died in the attack on the World Trade Center disintegrated after the collapse of the buildings, and medical examiners are still working to identify more than 20,000 pieces of human bodies they have collected.

The Havilands held two memorial services in late October – one in Ames and one in New York – not knowing if Tim’s body would ever be pulled from the rubble at ground zero.

In mid-June, Tim’s wife, Amy, called with the news: Using DNA testing, medical examiners had identified a few fragments of Tim’s body. Of the complete being Tim Haviland once was, all that returned to his family is a fragment of his right femur, a few ribs with connecting tissue and a section of an arm.

After the funeral, they’ll return to Iowa and work to keep Tim’s memory alive with their seven other children and five grandchildren.

They’re still concerned about their son, Andrew, who was assigned to the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan in August 2001, when the possibility of nuclear war with India created high tensions in the area.

“[Andrew] was considered in a high-risk position in August,” Douglas said. “We were more concerned about him than Tim, but, lo and behold, it was Tim who was killed.”

Andrew was reassigned to the embassy in Delhi, India in July.

“We were pleased to see him get out of Pakistan,” Douglas said. “India is considerably calmer, but still has a lot of tensions.”

And still wonder how to deal with Tim’s death.

“You wrestle with `How can you make his death influence something in your own life?'” Betty said.

They advocate what they believe Tim would have done had he lived through the last year.

Tim wouldn’t have liked what Douglas called John Ashcroft’s “legal shortcuts.” Tim wouldn’t have liked the alienation of Muslim and Arab-Americans. Tim especially wouldn’t have liked the aggressive retaliation against terrorism.

“He wasn’t a pacifist, exactly, but he felt the non-violent approach was much preferred to anything else,” Betty said. “We pray for peace every night.”

Keeping their son’s memory alive will be easier because he died on Sept. 11, 2001. What many call the worst day in our nation’s history – the day our foundation of invincibility was shaken to its core. The day we saw evil.

“When I was young, it used to be `Remember, remember the 11th of November,’ meaning the end of World War I,” Betty said. “Now, it’s `Remember, remember the 11th of September.’

“And he died on that awful day.”

– the BBC contributed to this article