In Tribute To Touri Hamzavi Bolourchi
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. 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.
September 10th, 2006 at 12:21 am
This is a beautiful tribute…I’m sure that Touri and her family appreciate the personal anecdotes that let us the reader know a little more about her….
Kelly, a fellow 2996 tributer
September 10th, 2006 at 9:44 am
September 11th Tribute, William R Ruth
THIS IS A STICKY POST. SCROLL DOWN FOR NEWER POSTS
div.button {width:145px; border: 1px #000 solid; background:url(’http://www.dcroe.com/images/adbg.gif’);}
div.button a {width:145px; display:block; text-align:center; font-weight:normal;co…
September 10th, 2006 at 6:48 pm
Very nice tribute, thanks.
September 11th, 2006 at 12:34 pm
A beautiful tribute for a beautiful woman. Woman like this are the salt of the earth. My thoughts go out to her family.
September 11th, 2006 at 12:34 pm
That was a beautiful tribute…You really brought her to life for me, and I appreciate your hard work and dedication to this project…I think this is something we will all remember being a part of…Take care
September 11th, 2006 at 2:57 pm
Thank you for introducing Touri to our family. You did a wonderful job on her tribute. Thank you.
Our Highest Regards,
The Hodsdon Family
September 11th, 2006 at 8:20 pm
Thank you for helping us all to learn a bit about Touri. Because of your efforts, she will now live on in our collective memories, and this is a wonderful thing.
I’m proud to be a part of the 2996 blogger family with you!
September 12th, 2006 at 12:50 am
2996 tribute to victims of 9/11 - Terrence E Adder
Before 9/11 the only view I had of the New York City skyline was from the top floor of my home in New Jersey. On any day I could look out the window and see the upper 30 floors of the World Trade Center.
When both buildings disappeared from view t…
September 12th, 2006 at 12:52 am
Wonderful tribute. So many talented, terrific human beings perished that day.
I linked your tribute at 2996 tribute to victims of 9/11 - Terrence E Adderley
September 12th, 2006 at 2:03 pm
Wow! I thank you all for the wonderful comments. I wanted to do a good job with my tribute to Touri Bolourchi and your kind words verified that I did. I sincerely hope someone informed Touri’s relatives and friends and maybe some of them looked at the tribute. If so, I hope they are pleased. I’ve been reading others’ tributes including all of yours and every one that I have read have been beautiful, heartfelt and touching. I haven’t looked at each and every one of the thousands posted and to be honest, it was emotionally overwhelming after a while and I just had to stop for a bit.
Like many, I remember where I was on that day, but I also remember the days following, too. At the time, I worked as a master control operator at WCTV in Tallahassee, FL and my shift was 5pm to 1:30am. So on the day of the attacks, I was in bed asleep when my mother-in-law called to wake me up and tell me of the situation. She was extremely worried about her daughter (my wife of course) who was working near the downtown area of Tallahassee and being the capital of the state of Florida she was worried that it might be attacked as well. I called my wife to tell her what was going on and from that point until I left for work that afternoon, I watched the coverage, flipping from channel to channel periodically.
Just to clarify, a master control operator is the personal at a TV station responsible for making sure everything that goes on air at the station does so properly and with good quality. That includes network feeds, commercials, newscasts, special bulletins, etc. WCTV is a CBS affiliate and like the rest of the networks, they were running wall-to-wall continuous coverage for several days. Even the cable channels managed to get coverage from various sources interrupting their normal shows. Since I was on master control, all I could do was sit and watch the CBS feed and I could call up all sorts of other live feeds on other satellites. I was getting more stuff that even what was being shown on the networks. Plus I was checking the internet as well.
It was an emotional several days at work and things were definitely not normal at WCTV nor any other TV station across the country. We didn’t get back to “normal” for well over a week or so.
Anyway, that’s sort of an overview (without going into details) of what I remember about living through 9/11 abd beyond.
Again, thank you all so much for visiting the tribute on my blog and I hope you all come back again for a visit.
Carl
December 11th, 2007 at 6:47 pm
Very nicely done may God give them the eternal hapiness, thank you.