A tragic loss; a final gift

Bedtime is the most difficult for the 8-year-old. That was when his mom would tuck him in and tell him everything was all right.

By ALICIA CALDWELL, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times
published September 10, 2002

[Family photo] CeeCee Lyles with her two sons, Jerome, left, and Jevon. The former police officer was a flight attendant aboard the hijacked plane that crashed in Pennsylvania.

Bedtime is the most difficult for the 8-year-old. That was when his mom would tuck him in and tell him everything was all right.

But these days, Jevon Castrillo has to go to sleep without his mother's reassuring words. CeeCee Lyles, 33, of Fort Myers, was a flight attendant on a hijacked United Airlines plane that plowed into the ground near Shanksville, Pa., last Sept. 11. Everyone aboard died.

She is survived by Jevon, another son, 17-year-old Jerome Smith, and husband, Lorne Lyles, 32, who had been a Fort Myers police officer until he resigned in April, citing personal reasons.

CeeCee Lyles, also a former police officer, left an extended family in Fort Pierce, where she grew up. Carrie Ross, an aunt who raised CeeCee and calls her a daughter, said CeeCee's death has been difficult for everyone, but particularly her sons.

The 8-year-old says "Grandma, I need my mom. I need her,"' said Ross.

Ross said the 17-year-old is more difficult to gauge.

"Jerome, he seems okay on the outside, but I don't know on the inside," Ross said.

And Lorne Lyles, her husband, who talked to CeeCee on a cell phone in the moments before she died?

"Lorne is struggling," Ross said. "I don't think he's doing real good right now."

CeeCee Lyles was one of the many victims who used their remaining moments to call loved ones. She was calm and poised when when she talked to her husband from the doomed Boeing 757.

As passengers screamed and cried in the background, she told him how much she loved him and their boys. The call came at 9:58 a.m. Seventeen minutes later, the jet crashed.

In an interview shortly after the attacks, Lorne Lyles said he will always be grateful to have had that last two- or three-minute conversation.

"Just hearing my wife saying she loved us through all that chaos on that plane is just embedded in my heart forever," he said. "That's my baby."

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