‘It is a bit of a tough day’: Siblings attend Wheaton ceremonies to recall their sister, Sue Sauer

John Sauer suspects that on the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States he will feel “pretty much the same as any other year.”

He will think of his little sister, Susan “Sue” Sauer, who was in New York City that morning attending a business meeting in the north tower of the World Trade Center. The 48-year-old was managing director of the Chicago office of an insurance brokerage unit of Marsh and McLennan Cos. (now Marsh McLennan).

She and 295 others in the company died in the attack that day. The company occupied floors 93 to 100, where the first plane hit.

Sue Sauer was a vivacious person. The Wheaton Central High School graduate loved to travel -- she had a goal of visiting 50 countries by age 50 and had been to 48. She was devoted to her five nephews, even taking up golf when one received a golf scholarship to college.

John Sauer and his other sister, Barb Sauer Pemberton, came back to Wheaton, from Wisconsin and Virginia, respectively, to attend two ceremonies Saturday. The first at 8 a.m. at Hultgren Funeral Home was just about Sue Sauer. It wasl be livestreamed on YouTube.

The other was a ceremony for all area victims at 9 a.m. at Memorial Park.

John Sauer traveled several times to New York City after the attack, visiting ground zero and a memorial museum, but he doesn’t intend to do so again.

“I don’t need that feeling,” he said.

He still has several of the teddy bears children from Oklahoma City, which had experienced a terrorist bombing of a federal building a few years earlier, sent to New York City.

John Sauer cherishes a song sung at a service several weeks after the attack at St. Patrick Catholic Cathedral in New York. The lyrics said, “Don’t say goodbye, just say good night.”

“It really gave us some strength. That was a strong point,” he said.

John Sauer said he plans to start talking to two of his grandchildren -- ages 9 and 11 -- about how their great-aunt died. He figures they are now old enough to handle it.

Sept. 11 “is a bit of a tough day,” he said. “But we just have to keep living.”