As the 25th anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks approaches, a metro Atlanta woman still keeps a box of love notes, birthday cards and paper flowers he made from napkins tucked around their home. Barbara Spence says she still loves Maynard Spence as much as she did the day he left for a work trip to New York and never came home.
Maynard S. Spence Jr. was 42 years old when he died on Sept. 11, 2001, according to CBS News. A construction safety consultant for Marsh & McLennan Cos. Inc.'s Georgia office, he was attending a morning business meeting on the 100th floor of the World Trade Center's North Tower when American Airlines Flight 11 struck, according to the Insurance Journal. He was a native of Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina, and lived in Douglasville, Georgia, with Barbara and their two daughters, Kristina and Shannon, per the National September 11th Memorial & Museum Collection.
Notes Hidden in a Cookbook
Barbara recently went through her stored memories for the first time in years, according to CBS News, and found one of Maynard's love notes hidden in a cookbook, tucked next to a cookie recipe. She and Maynard exchanged love notes for more than 10 and a half years, the station reports, and he made paper flowers and paper roses out of napkins that he left hidden around their home.
Barbara described Maynard as her soulmate and said he believed he was the luckiest man in the world, wanting her to always remember she was loved. In the days and weeks after the attack, she held onto hope that she would hear from him or hear something about him, the same account notes.
Maynard was identified in April 2002 through a part of his body found in the rubble, per CBS News. That resolution came far faster than what many other families have experienced: as of August 2025, the New York City Office of Chief Medical Examiner had positively identified 1,653 of the 2,753 World Trade Center victims using advanced DNA testing, according to NYC.gov, leaving roughly 40% of victims unidentified nearly a quarter-century later.
Trapped Above the Impact Zone
Flight 11 struck the North Tower between floors 93 and 99 at 8:46 a.m., destroying all three primary stairwells above floor 92 and trapping everyone caught higher up, according to federal findings summarized by Hoodline. Marsh & McLennan offices spanned the entire impact zone, and the firm suffered 295 employee deaths and 63 consultant fatalities that day, according to Leader's Edge Magazine.
Maynard worked in construction safety.
Artifacts Preserved at the 9/11 Museum
Barbara, Kristina and Shannon Spence donated a dark blue U.S. passport belonging to Maynard to the National September 11 Memorial & Museum's collection, according to the museum's collection records. The museum preserves such physical objects donated by surviving family members to help document individual victims' lives.
Maynard's death was one of the Georgia lives lost in the Sept. 11 attacks. Ahead of the 25th anniversary, Metro Atlanta and Georgia communities have organized commemorative events.
For Barbara, those larger observances sit alongside a private ritual: reopening a box of paper flowers and hidden notes from a husband who wanted her to know, decades later, that she was loved. “I still love him as much,” she told CBS News, as the 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks approaches.
