In previous years at this time I, along with thousands of other bloggers, devoted our blogs to the memories of the victims of the 9/11 attacks via Project 2996. Each blogger featured one of the victims and created their tribute in whatever fashion in which they were inspired. The World According To Carl paid tribute to Touri Bolourchi and I am reposting that tribute in her honor on this solemn anniversary.
This blog is paying tribute and honoring Touri Hamzavi Bolourchi. Touri was a passenger on United Airlines flight 175 which took off from Boston, Massachusetts early on September 11th, 2001 with its destination being Los Angeles, California. However terrorists hijacked the plane and crashed it into the south tower of World Trade Center shortly after 9 am that morning. All 65 people on board were killed: 56 passengers (including 5 hijackers), 7 flight attendants and 2 pilots. Touri was not supposed to be aboard Flight 175, but she decided to stay a few extra days in Boston to stay with her daughter and two grandchildren while her husband, Akbar, flew home to Los Angeles on the flight she, too, had originally planned to take.
Touri Bolourchi, age 69, was a retired nurse. She lived in Beverly Hills, California. She was born in Tehran, Iran. Touri met her husband, Dr. Akbar Bolourchi when she was a head nurse at the women’s hospital in Tehran. In 1979, she moved to the United States with her two daughters. Besides being an accomplished nurse, she spoke six languages: Turkish, English, French, Italian, Arabic and Farsi. As a nurse, educated in England and married to a doctor, she was determined to see her girls properly educated. Two years later, in 1981, her husband Akbar joined them. Her husband had a medical practice in Beverly Hills. Touri was fluent in six languages. After settling in California, Mrs. Bolourchi created a home filled with exotic decorative touches, spicy Middle Eastern food and books — in French, English, Farsi, Arabic and Italian — that she read obsessively, to herself and to her daughters, according to Roya Touran, her elder daughter. She loved cooking, especially for guests. Dishes requiring a dozen steps and two dozen ingredients did not faze her.
“She would look through food and wine magazines,” Mrs. Touran said, “read through a recipe and just make it for guests. She was very courageous. And it always worked out.”
She was in Boston visiting her daughter and two grandsons and had been there with them for two weeks. Her husband said she had not traveled to Boston for two years due to her fear of planes. He also said that two of her cousins died in airline crashes in Europe and Africa. She was survived by her husband, two daughters (Neda and Roya) and her grandsons (Bobby and Kayvon).
The memorial plaques for Touri Bolourchi shown above are located in Brentwood, California.
The quilt segment in tribute to Touri Bolourchi is from the United in Memory 9/11 Victims Memorial Quilt.
My sincerest and heartfelt prayers, condolences and thoughts go out to the family and friends of Touri Bolourchi, and to all of the other victims’ families and friends on this anniversary.
Information contained in this tribute came from various online sources and also a profile originally published in the New York Times on June 30th, 2002.
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