Angelene C. Carter – Army Spouse & Government Employee

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Angelene C. Carter
Attack Location: Pentagon
Age: 51
Home: Forestville, Maryland

Angelene C. Carter has a passion for family, Orlando vacations and doing church work. The 51-year-old accountant is among those who went to work at the Pentagon on Tuesday and did not come home.

“I am keeping up hope,” her husband, Fred, a retired Army Sergeant from Forestville, said as he stood on his front steps and talked about the woman he fell in love with on a dance floor 20 years ago. “It was a Christmas office party,” he recalled, “and she asked me to dance.”

They married two years later and had a daughter, Freddye, now 17. This summer, Freddye and her mother visited Universal Studios and rode rides together. But her mother has a tough side, too, Freddye said: “She always says, ‘Keep your head in the books and clean up your room.’ “

Angelene Carter is a member of St. Paul Baptist Church in Capitol Heights, where she serves on the usher board.

Fred Carter, who works for the Internal Revenue Service, drove with his wife to the Suitland Metro station Tuesday morning. They rode the same train across the Anacostia River, then went their separate ways. He hasn’t seen her since.

Every day, he visits the Pentagon’s family crisis center, set up at a nearby hotel. “I go there twice a day,” he said, “at 10 a.m. and 4 p.m., when they give out information.”

  — Hamil R. Harris

NOTE: Buried in Section 64 of Arlington National Cemetery near the Pentagon.

CARTER, ANGELENE C.

At The Pentagon on September 11, 2001, ANGELENE C. CARTER a much loved and respected wife, mother, family member, co-worker and friend has left behind a strong legacy. She is survived by her loving husband, Fred A. Carter; her mother, Leona D. Cash; two daughters, Angenette Cash and Freddye Jean Carter; three step-daughters, Venus Scott, Victoria Carter and Cheryl Carter; two sistes, Linda C. Reid and Deloise C. Thorne and two brothers Claude and Donnie Cash; she is predeceased by her father, James W. Cash, a sister, Shirley T. Johnson and a brother, James W. Cash, Jr. Funeral service at St. Paul Baptist Church, 6611 Walker Mill Rd., Capitol Heights, MD on Saturday, October 27 at 12 noon, Rev. Dr. Robert J. Williams, Sr., officiating. Interment Arlington National Cemetery.

24 June 2006:About two years ago, Freddye Carter, then 20, took a part-time job as a civilian cashier in the commissary at Fort Myer in Arlington. She found the job online and was hired without telling anyone about her mother.
She drives to work now in her Ford Expedition, which she paid for herself, passing by her mother’s grave at Arlington National Cemetery on her way to the 3-to-11 p.m. shift.

I’m a GS-3,” she says, and the pride in her voice is unmistakable.

And: “I don’t want people to feel sorry for me. Of course, my mom’s death makes me cry, but I deal with it. Every day.”

She’s sitting in the living room of a brick house in District Heights, in Prince George’s County just over the District line, where she and her father, Fred, lived with her mother, Angelene, until Sept. 11. On a wall opposite the sofa hangs an oil painting of Angelene, a petite woman with a heart-shaped face who worked as a civilian accountant for the Army.

Before September 11, 2001, Carter hoped to go to Frostburg State University in Western Maryland to study music. Instead, she enrolled in Prince George’s Community College, where she has accumulated more than 50 credit hours.

It’s just Freddye and her dad now, and their shih tzu, Mikey. Her father, an Army staff sergeant, retired in July 2002. She calls him on his cellphone several times a day to check up on him.

He stays on her case, too. About a year after her mother was killed in the Pentagon, Freddye started dating a young man she knew from Suitland High School. Her father tried to steer her away from him, saying he was only after vast sums of money that he, like so many people, assumed she had been given after September 11. They dated on and off for three years, going out to dinner and to the movies. He never paid a dime, she says. She finally realized he was taking advantage of her and dropped him.

Why did she stay with him so long? Because she could talk to him, she said.

“My mom was my best friend. I was trying to fill a void. I didn’t like talking to my dad because he would cry and I would cry.”

Those were hard times. Sometimes the reminders came out of the blue, like when she was in a department store in May and a salesperson asked her, “What are you and your mother doing for Mother’s Day?” She stopped watching TV news and scanning magazines in the grocery stores because it seemed she’d always see another story about Sept. 11.

She knows that if Angelene were around, she would be telling her daughter to put the past behind her and get on with her life. That is what she has done.

Since she was 12, Freddye has been taking voice lessons in opera. Last fall she applied to the music conservatory at Oberlin College. She was put on the waiting list and plans to reapply in August. If she isn’t accepted this time, she may seek admission to the school of music at the University of Maryland. Or she may look for a higher-level job in the federal government.

Her bedroom is small, and cluttered with bluejeans, pink and purple tops, stuffed animals and CDs. Here, she is allowed to still be a girl, if a girl with purpose.

 

When I get up in the morning, before I do anything else, I sit on the edge of that bed,” she says, pointing to her single. “I ask myself, what have I got to accomplish today? Tomorrow is not a promise to anybody.”

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