Margaret Mattic was 51 years old and working on the 83rd floor of the World Trade Center's North Tower on September 11, 2001, when a hijacked commercial airplane struck the building at about 8:45 a.m. She managed one last call to a friend named Bobby Marsh, telling him she was trapped inside and waiting for instructions. Her body was never found.
The call came just before the tower fell, and it became the last anyone heard from her, according to the Detroit Free Press. Marsh phoned Mattic's mother, Katie Mattic, to relay what he'd heard, setting off a frantic week for a Detroit family desperate to find their youngest daughter, one of four sisters, in a city that had become unrecognizable. The Free Press reports the family, including sister Jean Neal, along with Vivian Mattic, Commodore Price, and Peggy Robinson, traveled to Brooklyn before daybreak the Monday after the attacks.
Mattic had lived in a Brooklyn apartment for 10 years, chasing acting work while taking on office jobs to pay the bills, the outlet notes. Her family cleared that apartment by that Friday, gathering her belongings for the trip back to Michigan. Jean Neal got the code to her sister's apartment voicemail from the phone company, and later handed over Margaret's toothbrush, hairbrush, and comb so investigators could attempt identification, per the same account.
Trapped Ten Floors Below Impact
Mattic worked in the offices of General Telecom, a subsidiary of American Tower Corporation, on the 83rd floor — roughly 10 floors below where Flight 11 struck. All 13 General Telecom employees in the building died that morning, trapped by jammed exit doors and collapsing ceilings, according to details compiled by Wireless Estimator. It represented the largest single pocket of fatalities below the North Tower's impact zone. American Tower Corporation later established the General Telecom Family Fund to provide financial support to the families of those 13 employees, with contributions from hundreds of telecommunication contractors and industry donors, the outlet reports.
The South Tower collapsed at 9:50 a.m. that morning, following a second plane strike on that building shortly after 9 a.m., part of an attack that killed thousands across New York, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania. Mattic's family listed her as missing at the Pier 94 Family Assistance Center, a hub the City of New York ran along the Hudson River. There, the Mattics submitted an affidavit from the last person to speak with Margaret, along with one from Katie Mattic herself, and gave DNA samples — Vivian Mattic and Jean Neal both provided theirs, the Free Press reports.
That center allowed municipal agencies to collect DNA reference samples, accept affidavits, and issue expedited death certificates for families who had no remains to bury, according to the City of New York. Margaret Mattic's death certificate arrived that November 1, listing her manner of death as homicide, and the family received 10 copies. She would have turned 52 on November 8.
A Church Family in Brooklyn Steps In
William E. Frazier Jr., a financial consultant and seminary student, helped the Mattics navigate New York's unfamiliar streets and legal procedures that week, the Free Press reports. Reverend Anthony Trufant introduced the Detroit family to the congregation at Emmanuel Baptist Church in Clinton Hills, Brooklyn, which held an evening revival service during their stay. The church, with roughly 2,200 members, had been Margaret's spiritual home for about five years before the attacks — she'd joined after her father, Jessie Mattic, died in 1997, and she sang first alto in the church's 17-member Total Praise Choir.
That choir planned to travel by van from Brooklyn to Detroit to perform at Margaret's memorial service, set for that Saturday at 11 a.m. at New Mount Zion Missionary Baptist Church on Elmhurst Street in Detroit, according to the outlet. Katie Mattic told the paper the family simply needed to bring Margaret home, and bring her belongings home with her. She said prayer and faith had helped her endure the tragedy.
From Cass Tech to Wayne State's Drama Program
Long before Manhattan, Margaret Mattic graduated from Detroit's Cass Technical High School in 1967 and went on to write a one-woman play titled The Vision, about prophetic gifts passing through generations of a family, according to a tribute entered into the Congressional Record. She earned her bachelor's degree in 1973 from Wayne State University in Detroit, where she studied theater under director Earl D.A. Smith and performed in community theater productions including Phillip Hayes Dean's Sty of the Blind Pig, per the New York Amsterdam News. It was that pursuit of acting roles that had drawn her to Manhattan in the first place, where she took temporary office jobs like the one at General Telecom to support herself between auditions.
Margaret Mattic's name is now permanently inscribed on Panel N-33 of the North Pool at the National September 11 Memorial & Museum in Lower Manhattan, according to Legacy.com. She is among 42 victims with Michigan ties documented by the Michigan Remembers 9-11 Fund, a registry that also includes fellow Detroit natives Marsha D. Ratchford and Sandra Lee Wright, as reported by CBS News. That fund traces back to East Lansing economist Patrick Anderson, who escaped the Marriott World Trade Center hotel that morning wearing only one shoe and later founded the archive with a $25,000 pledge — a story Hoodline detailed in Michigan Man Fled WTC in One Shoe.
Nearly 1,100 Victims Still Unnamed
Margaret Mattic's body was never recovered, a reality still shared by roughly 40% of the 2,753 people killed at the World Trade Center site — nearly 1,100 victims — according to ABC News. In August, the New York City Office of Chief Medical Examiner used forensic investigative genetic genealogy for the first time in the effort's history to positively identify the 1,651st World Trade Center victim, a breakthrough Hoodline covered in New DNA Science Names 1651st Victim. The technique combines advanced DNA sequencing with public family tree databases, offering renewed hope to families like the Mattics nearly 25 years after they first handed over a toothbrush and a hairbrush at Pier 94.
