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GREENSBORO — Two dates, nearly 10 years apart, have left an indelible mark on the family of Sandy Bradshaw .

On May 1, 2011, U.S. soldiers killed the man who took the life of their mother, wife and daughter on the other day they will never forget: Sept. 11, 2001.

Pat Waugh, Bradshaw’s mother, was watching TV Sunday when broadcasters broke in to announce the news: Osama bin Laden, mastermind of the 9/11 terror attacks, was dead.

“I don’t know exactly the best way to describe it,” said Waugh, 68, of Climax. “It was kinda like a little weight lifted off of me.

“This is something we’ve waited on for so long. I was beginning to think it was never going to happen.”

Sandy’s husband, Phil Bradshaw, told WGHP (Fox, Channel 8, scroll to the bottom to watch) that he is glad bin Laden is finally gone but that it doesn’t change anything for him.

“I still don’t have a wife and my children still don’t have a mother,” he said.

Sandy Bradshaw was the second-oldest of Waugh’s five children.

“It’s not easy losing a child. That’s the hardest loss I’ve had,” she said. “You have to cope and go on. You have to do what you have to do.”

Sandy Bradshaw would have turned 48 this June .

The mother of two young children and a stepdaughter was a part-time flight attendant, flying four days a month, from Newark, N.J., to San Francisco and back.

Her plane — United Flight 93 — was one of four taken over by hijackers on 9/11. Three reached their targets, killing thousands when two hit the twin towers of the World Trade Center and one plowed into the Pentagon.

But United Flight 93 crashed in an empty Pennsylvania field after passengers and crew tried to wrest control of the commercial jet from hijackers. All 44 aboard, including four hijackers, died.

“Maybe Sandy was chosen to do this job that day because she was a strong person and a fighter, and she could do what she had to do that day,” Waugh said.

Over the years she has visited the site in Pennsylvania for quiet contemplation.

She remembers a bubbly daughter who loved gardening and animals. She sees bits of that in Sandy’s children. Alexandria, 12 and a sixth-grader, loves animals. And Nathan, 10 and a fourth-grader, shares Sandy’s bubbly personality.

“I hate it that she’s not here to be a mother to them,” Waugh said.

Tracy Peele, 41, one of Sandy Bradshaw’s younger sisters, wondered if this day would ever come.

She’d thought bin Laden might die of old age, rather than be caught or captured. He’d eluded U.S. forces for so long.

“We know the reality, that (this) doesn’t mean that there’s no terrorism anymore,” Peele said. “But for us, knowing he was the mastermind of September 11, it brings some kind of justice.”

Contact Jennifer Fernandez at 373-7064 or jennifer.fernandez@news-record.com