Gloucester resident William "Todd" Coxe, a sailor deployed aboard an aircraft carrier, was eagerly awaiting a homecoming when the fateful events of Sept. 11, 2001 unfolded.

Departing for this mission in April 2001, he had left behind a wife of less than a year, a 16-month-old and was about to miss the birth of his middle son that August.

Coxe, a sailor attached to an E-2C Hawkeye squadron, was expecting the remainder of his deployment to be a pleasure cruise. "We had been all over the Med (Mediterranean) Sea, with stops to Naples, Cannes, Lisbon and Palma," Coxe said. "We were in the Persian Gulf at (that) point, and were looking forward to the possibility of hitting Cape Town and Rio de Janeiro."

However, the sailors quickly found out that this was just not to be.

"I was working down in the laundry area of the ship running night shift," Coxe said. "I had been working the flight deck and repair, but it was my time to rotate." ...