Anna's Book of Days

18 down, 0 to go!!! We made it.

Two years ago this week, the owner of my company, Mark Benjamin, was killed when his plane veered off the runway into a hangar housing another plane at the Santa Monica airport. The plane that he hit had just been filled with fuel, and exploded immediately upon impact. Three others, including his son Luke, were also killed in the accident. I had worked for Mark's company for more than thirteen years at the time of his death, and he was involved in every detail of its operations, right down to selecting the tile in the restrooms and the type of coffee in the kitchen. Since I had started working full time in our office, about a year before, I saw Mark almost every day. He always said hello, asked me how I was, wanted to know what I was working on and how it was going. We spoke dozens if not hundreds of times. But after his death I realized how little I knew him, and how little he knew me. In his obituaries and eulogies, I saw a man who was much warmer and deeper than the man I ha...