The Christian Century

When she was ten years old, Deora Bodley was in a play called Compukids in which she sang a song written by her father: “My daddy always said / when he’d put me down to bed: / Rest easy, little one, and don’t you cry. / For there’s nothing there, you see, / that can harm you, trust in me.” The song, “Ceiling-Sky,” with words by Jeff Mooring, appears on a Web site celebrating Deora Bodley’s life. She died when United flight 93 crashed in Pennsylvania on September 11. She was 20, and a junior at Santa Clara University.

Her father, Derrill Bodley, had no interest in military retaliation after the attacks. “My first reaction was: I couldn’t change what happened. So I had to figure out what would be the right thing to do after that.”