San Jose, Calif. – After Sandra Dahl’s husband died in the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, she had their names inscribed together on his gravestone.
Jason Dahl was the pilot of United Airlines Flight 93, which crashed into a Pennsylvania field. His widow, who lives in Colorado, planned that when her day came, she would join him in spirit and on finely etched granite.
But the tragedy of Jason Dahl’s death has fallen into a bitter family feud over his remains.
His widow has sued San Jose’s Oak Hill Memorial Park, where he is buried, claiming the cemetery replaced his tombstone with a new one that removed all mention of her name – and did so at the request of her mother-in-law, Mildred Dahl.
Mildred Dahl died Monday at age 83, one day before she was named in the lawsuit.
The couple met on the job – Sandra Dahl is a United flight attendant – and were together seven years, the last five as husband and wife. They had no children together.
Jason Dahl was 43 when he was killed.
Bill Heiderich, who is married to Jason’s sister, said he didn’t know Sandra had filed the lawsuit. But he doubted that Mildred Dahl or any other Dahl family member had agreed to allow Sandra to be buried next to Jason.
He said Jason’s parents, Mildred and Duane, had bought a four-grave site at Oak Hill many years ago and that the family – not Sandra – has the right to choose who is buried there. Duane Dahl is buried in the plot, soon to be joined by his wife.
Sandra Dahl, 47, said she learned about the tombstone switch last spring, when a friend who had visited the gravesite asked why her name had been removed from the stone.
When Dahl called the cemetery, she said, she was told Mildred Dahl requested the new headstone and that the original should be buried under new one.
“I’m absolutely horrified and disgusted that anyone would disturb his grave like that,” she said Wednesday.
Sandra Dahl wants now to move his remains to a cemetery in Littleton, where they lived. “I want to be buried near him,” she said. “I never intend to marry again.”
Oak Hill cemetery did not return calls Wednesday.
This article has been corrected in this online archive. Orrginally, due to incorrect information provided by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services, it misstated the number of years that Jason and Sandra Dahl were together before he died in the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. They were together for a total of seven years, and married for the last five.
